NHL Expansion Draft: Developing storylines for each team

The news of Seattle getting an NHL team is a few weeks old now, and many people have started speculating which players may be drafted by the new franchise. Here’s a look at what may transpire in 2021.

One of the more recent popular themes among hockey writers this month has been to formulate a potential opening night roster for the Seattle Haven’t-been-named-yets. They’ll be getting a team via the NHL Expansion Draft in 2021. Experts have looked ahead 2.5 years to imagine who would be selected by a general manager who hasn’t been hired yet.

However, this exercise is relatively pointless. The amount of things that can and will change over the course of time between now and summer 2021 is zany. This includes, but is not limited to: contract renewals, no-move clauses (NMC’s), injuries, trades, free agency, drafts, call-ups, send downs, Ilya Kovalchuk’s, international signings, salary cap changes, and a potential (ok, very likely) lockout.

Additionally, general managers and their staffs may look at what happened just a couple of years ago with Vegas and learn that losing one player may be better than trading to protect a couple of others from the draft. After all, the top three scorers for Vegas were all acquired from teams that traded for expansion exemptions (William Karlsson, Jon Marchessault, Alex Tuch).

So to realistically draft a team right now would be downright impossible. Think about the parameters the Seattle team must meet.

1. Salary Cap minimum and maximum – We won’t know what these numbers are until that year comes around.
2. Players under contract – Seattle will be required to pick at least 20 players who are under contract during the 2021-22 season. Most players who are currently under contract for that long are likely players who would be protected anyway, at this point. All other players, who knows?
3. 40/70 rule – At least two forwards and one defenseman who played at least 40 games in the 2020-21 season, or 70 games combined in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons must be exposed for the draft. Considering that first and second year professionals are exempt, if teams fill their roster with kids over the next couple of seasons, this rule may come in to play.

So in order to truly determine who each team would protect and/or expose, we have to wait until the 2020-21 season at least to figure that out.

In the meantime, we can at least identify some kind of story to potentially shadow as the time draws nearer. Each team will have their internal debates as to whom they want to protect, and work around from there. Some teams will have major issues on the rise, others may be lucky and lose a minor leaguer or an expiring contract.

This way, we can have an expansion post, and not have to make the same out of left field predictions that other writers have been up to.