Over the last few days, Jim Benning and the Canucks seem to have gone out of their way to start preparing fans for the possibility that anything might happen during the early stages of the draft on June 24.
This morning, the organization seems to be telegraphing one of the players they're thinking about picking up in a later round.
As a local boy, son of a former Canuck who played with Trevor Linden and a member of the Vancouver Giants, Ty Ronning is very familiar to Canucks brass. Considering he's ranked 88th among North American skaters by
NHL Central Scouting—and actually dropped from a mid-term rank of 82nd—he got quite a bit of favourable press during last weekend's draft combine, too.
The final draft order for all teams won't be determined until after the Stanley Cup is awarded, but
Wikipedia lays out the complete selection order based on the information that we have so far.
Here's the complete list of Canucks picks, as of today:
Round 1: fifth
Round 2: none - 33rd pick was traded to Florida as part of the Gudbranson deal
Round 3: 64th
Round 4: none - 94th pick was traded to Florida as part of the Gudbranson deal
Round 5: 124th pick was traded to Montreal as part of last year's Kassian/Prust deal
Round 5: 140th - pick (originally from NYI) was acquired from Florida as part of the Gudbranson deal
Round 6: 154th
Round 7: 184th
Round 7: 194th - pick was acquired from Carolina as part of the Eddie Lack trade
As things stand, if the Canucks want Ronning, he'd have to be picked at 64, well above his ranking, unless the team wants to hope that he's still available at 140.
Expansion Draft Rules
The NHL chose not to formally announce the results of this week's meeting of the league's executive committee, which arrived at a decision on whether or not to recommend expansion.
It is generally expected that Las Vegas will be approved for the 2017-18 season when the board of governors meet in that city on June 22, ahead of the NHL Awards. That belief gained more traction on Friday when
Sportsnet's Chris Johnston and
The Globe and Mail's James Mirtle both offered up details on the instructions that teams are receiving regarding how the expansion draft will be conducted.
The key points:
• If one expansion team is granted, existing teams can only lose a maximum of one player.
• Players with two years or less of professional experience will be exempt from the draft. From Johnston:
Determining who that covers is based on the definition included in the collective bargaining agreement – meaning that 10 games played in the NHL at age 18 or 19 counts as a season, as does any American Hockey League or NHL season for players older than that.
For the Canucks' young forwards, that would mean the Bo Horvat and Brendan Gaunce would need to be protected, while Jake Virtanen and Ben Hutton would not.
• Overall, from Mirtle:
Teams will have a choice between protecting seven forwards, three defencemen and one goaltender (11 players) or eight skaters and one goaltender (nine players). The second option allows for teams to protect four defencemen but forces them to expose three more forwards in order to do so.
• There's a requirement that the players exposed by each team must meet an experience threshold. From Johnston:
A minimum of two forwards and one defenceman must be exposed who have played 40 games the previous season, or a total of 70 over the previous two.
There is also a requirement that the 40/70 players are under contract for the first expansion season.
That 40-game count will be for the upcoming season, 2016-17, so it's a bit early to start speculating on which Canucks players will meet that threshold. Players who don't meet it can also still be exposed, they just won't satisfy this condition.
• There's a bit more clarification on no-trade and no-move clauses. From Mirtle:
Teams must protect players that have no-movement clauses active in the 2017-18 season. No-movement clauses active in 2016-17 will have no impact. There will likely be exceptions made for players with no-movement clauses who are out with career-ending injuries (i.e. Ryane Clowe and Nathan Horton). Teams are not expected to be forced to protect those contracts.
For the Canucks, only Daniel and Henrik Sedin have no-move clauses.
Players with any type of no-trade clauses *can* be exposed and, according to Johnston, "Teams will also be permitted to ask players to waive their no-movement clauses for inclusion in the expansion draft."
• There are also some restrictions on reacquiring traded players. From Mirtle:
Teams cannot reacquire players they trade after Jan. 1, 2017 prior to Jan. 1, 2018. This is to prevent teams from entering arrangements to “hide” players from the expansion draft. There will likely be a lot more guidelines as part of this rule.
This gives teams some idea of how to shape their rosters for the upcoming season. The expansion draft picture will come into sharper focus, I imagine, after July 1 and as the summer wears on.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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