Hypotheticals: Expansion Draft

14 years ago

Let’s say for a moment that the NHL has decided to add two more franchises, like they did in 2000 (Minnesota and Columbus). The first thing they do is hold an expansion draft for the two teams, which are to be located in Hamilton and Kansas City.

The rules for the expansion draft are as they were in 2000, and are as follows (courtesy of Wikipedia):

26 of the 28 teams existing in the league at the time of the draft were each allowed to protect either one goaltender, five defensemen, and nine forwards or two goaltenders, three defensemen, and seven forwards.
For teams protecting only one goaltender, there was no experience requirement for those left unprotected. For teams protecting two goaltenders, each goaltender left unprotected must have appeared in either 10 NHL games in the 1999–2000 season or 25 games in the 1998–99 season and 1999–2000 seasons combined. A goaltender had to be in net for at least 31 minutes in each game for the game to be counted against these totals.
At least one defenceman left unprotected by each team had to have appeared in at least 40 games in the 1999–2000 season or 70 games in the 1998–99 season and 1999–2000 seasons combined. At least two forwards left unprotected by each team had to have met the same requirements.
52 players were chosen in the draft, two from each participating franchise. Only one goaltender or one defensemen could be selected from each franchise.

Additionally, all unsigned draft picks (except picks drafted from Europe in 1996 or earlier who remain with their European clubs) and players with two years or less of professional experience are considered protected.

Here then is the list of Oilers players that would be at risk of getting selected:

Eligible Forwards

Gilbert Brule
Alexander Bumagin
Ales Hemsky
Shawn Horcoff
Jean-Francois Jacques
Steve MacIntyre
Alexei Mikhnov
Evgeny Muratov
Chris Minard
Ethan Moreau
Robert Nilsson
Linus Omark
Patrick O’Sullivan
Dustin Penner
Fernando Pisani
Ryan Potulny
Marc Pouliot
Liam Reddox
Rob Schremp
Ryan Stone
Zack Stortini

Eligible Defensemen

Tom Gilbert
Denis Grebeshkov
Matt Nickerson
Ladislav Smid
Sheldon Souray
Steve Staios
Jason Strudwick
Lubomir Visnovsky

Eligible Goaltenders

Bjorn Bjurling
Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers
Devan Dubnyk
Nikolai Khabibulin

*I’m not 100% sure on Linus Omark and Ryan O’Marra, but for the purpose of this exercise O’Marra will be considered exempt, since I believe O’Marra’s brief AHL playoff stint in 2005-06 doesn’t count as a year of professional hockey, and Omark will be considered eligible because of his professional experience in Europe.

The List

Who should the Oilers protect from this hypothetical expansion draft? I’m curious to see what the consensus is in the comments, but I’ll do up my list now.

First of all, the strength of the Oilers current group is its defensive corps, so I’ve decided to protect nine forwards, five defenseman and one goaltender rather than seven, three and two.

Protected Forwards

I’m going to start with the forwards, since they’re relatively easy:

Ales Hemsky
Shawn Horcoff
Ethan Moreau
Patrick O’Sullivan
Dustin Penner
Fernando Pisani

Those six were obvious, and the next three comes down to a choice between a group of Gilbert Brule, J-F Jacques, Robert Nilsson, Linus Omark, Marc Pouliot, Rob Schremp and Zack Stortini. Jacques’ injury concerns, Nilsson’s salary and redundancy on the roster, and Schremp’s stagnation lead me to eliminate them. I also make the difficult choice to keep Zack Stortini off of the protected list because while I love his work ethic and willingness, I can’t ever see him elevated much higher than the fourth line. My final three protected forwards are:

Gilbert Brule
Linus Omark
Marc Pouliot

Protected Defensemen

This part of the list I found incredibly easy. I would protect the following five defensemen:

Tom Gilbert
Denis Grebeshkov
Ladislav Smid
Sheldon Souray
Lubomir Visnovsky

Left unprotected were Steve Staios (salary, age), Jason Strudwick (depth defenseman) and Matt Nickerson (obviously).

Protected Goaltender

Nikolai Khabibulin

This was easily the hardest part of the list. Bjorn Bjurling was an easy player to leave unprotected, while Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers came next because he is neither ready for an NHL starting role nor does he have Devan Dubnyk’s potential. That left me a choice between Nikolai Khabibulin and Devan Dubnyk.

Nikolai Khabibulin would be an obvious choice if his contract wasn’t so long (four years) and impossible to get out of (over 35) and there weren’t other goaltenders (Biron, Fernandez) still on the market. That said, I would probably opt to protect him and expose Dubnyk unless I could hammer out an agreement in principle with Martin Biron.

Since I can also only lose one goaltender, I’d work hard to try and convince teams to take Deslauriers instead of Dubnyk. At the 2000 Draft, San Jose made trades with both Minnesota and Columbus to keep them from selecting Evgeni Nabokov, and since my team could only lose one goaltender, I’d try and make a deal if a team elected to take Dubnyk over Deslauriers.