NHL expansion no longer seems a matter of if but when. At some point in the near future, the owners of the world's best hockey league are going to be tempted beyond endurance by the opportunity to get a big pile of money they don't have to split with the players. When that happens, the NHL will expand beyond 30 teams.
What will that look like for current NHL clubs?
To provide an outline, we've put together the optimal protected list for every NHL team in the event of an expansion draft this summer. We can't know what that draft will look like, but we've opted to use the rules of the 2000 Expansion Draft.
As detailed by SLAM! Hockey, in 2000, each NHL team was allowed to protect either nine forwards, five defencemen and a single goalie or seven forwards, three defencemen and two goalies. All players with a maximum of two years' worth of professional experience were considered exempt from the draft.
Additionally, each team had to make available two forwards and a single defenceman with recent NHL experience—either 40 games in the preceding season or 70 games over the last two seasons. Teams protecting two goalies had to make ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
Article written by Jonathan Willis
Every NHL Team’s Optimal Expansion Draft Protected List
December 18th, 2015 by Jonathan Willis Leave a reply »
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