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Who would you protect in the coming expansion draft?

By Cornelius Hardenbergh
Elsa

Reports are flying all over the place that the NHL will be adding up to 4 teams by 2017 in Seattle (yay!), Las Vegas (eh!), Toronto (sure!), and Quebec (why not!). This will net the owners 1.4 billion dollars in expansion fees, which is nice for them and I'm sure they'll use that money for something other than buying orphans to drink their blood. B-Positive.

Anyways, intrepid commenter Arenacale pointed out that, if this comes to fruition, we'll have an EXPANSION DRAFT! Expansion drafts are fun because you get to protect some amount of players on your team and make the new teams pick from your less-good players. The most recent expansion draft, in 2000, had rules as such:

Option 1:

  • Protect one goaltender, five defensemen, and nine forwards
  • No experience requirement for unprotected goalies
  • At least one defenceman and two forwards left unprotected has to have appeared in at least 40 games in the previous season or 70 games in the previous two seasons combined.

    • Option 2:

  • Protect two goaltenders, three defensemen, and seven forwards
  • Each goaltender left unprotected must have appeared in either 10 NHL games in the previous season or 25 games in the previous two seasons combined. TOI must be greater than or equal to 31 minutes to count as a game played.
  • At least one defenceman and two forwards left unprotected has to have appeared in at least 40 games in the previous season or 70 games in the previous two seasons combined.

    • In both cases, only one defenseman or goaltender could be picked from each team, and only two players could be picked from each team.

    Who's eligibile? I'm glad you asked. In 2000, this was the case:

    Exempt from the Expansion Draft are (i) all first and second-year pros and (ii) unsigned draft choices (except unsigned draft choices drafted from European clubs [drafted at least 4 years ago] and who remain unsigned).

    Say this was happening in 2015, when Quebec's new arena is scheduled to open. Who do you protect? Who do you want picked up?