Expansion Draft: protected lists revealed
After Saturday’s 5 pm ET deadline passed, the NHL revealed the published list of available and protected players yesterday.
The Seattle Kraken will have a few days to finalize their selections before their selection of 30 players — one from each team with the exception of Vegas — will be formally announced on television this Wednesday. Sportsnet will be broadcasting the event here in Canada starting at 8 pm ET.
Looking at the list of names available for selection, it is safe to say that expansion teams these days have it easy. When the Senators and Lightning had their expansion draft in 1992, their competitors were able to protect 14 skaters and two goaltenders.
Seattle has the opportunity to immediately inject some significant talent into their lineup.
From the Ottawa angle, here is are the lists of available and protected Senators players:
Available
Vitaly Abramov (F)
Michael Amadio (F)
Artem Anisimov (F)
J.C. Beaudin (F)
Clark Bishop (F)
Evgenii Dadonov (F)
Jonathan Davidsson (F)
Ryan Dzingel (F)
Micheal Haley (F)
Jack Kopacka (F)
Zachary Magwood (F)
Matthew Peca (F)
Logan Shaw (F)
Derek Stepan (F)
Chris Tierney (F)
Josh Brown (D)
Cody Goloubef (D)
Mikael Wikstrand (D)
Joey Daccord (G)
Anton Forsberg (G)
Marcus Hogberg (G)
Matt Murray (G)
Protected
Drake Batherson (F)
Connor Brown (F)
Logan Brown (F)
Nick Paul (F)
Brady Tkachuk (F)
Austin Watson (F)
Colin White (F)
Thomas Chabot (D)
Victor Mete (D)
Nikita Zaitsev (D)
Filip Gustavsson (G)
Not surprisingly, the Senators elected to protect the combination of seven forwards, three defencemen and one goaltender. This composition made the most sense after the Senators put in a claim on Victor Mete and he proved that he could play as a regular.
Drake Batherson, Connor Brown, Brady Tkachuk and Nick Paul were locks to be protected as forwards while the aforementioned Mete and Thomas Chabot were easy to pencil in the blue line. The real intrigue was how Pierre Dorion and his staff were going to strategize and fill the rest of their protected list.
Adding Nikita Zaitsev does not come as a shock. Regardless of the poor possession metrics and money owed that the Senators could reallocate more efficiently, Zaitsev is appreciated by D.J. Smith. It does not matter that Zaitsev’s positive defensive contributions are continually undermined by his ability to recover and transition pucks up the ice, the organization clearly views him as someone they can rely on to play against the opposition’s best players.
The only alternative to protecting Zaitsev was Josh Brown, but the reality is that neither player really projects as an asset that Seattle would target. The only benefit to exposing Zaitsev would be to hope that the Kraken takes the remainder of Zaitsev’s contract off the Senators’ hands.
The decision to expose Evgenii Dadonov one year into the three-year contract that he signed last year is an intriguing one. He struggled in his first season, scoring only 13 goals and adding seven assists. Dadonov was expected to help boost the offence and power play, but he scored a Muckaltian rate with the man advantage — contributing zero goals and a lonely assist.
Playing for a new organization with a new coach and linemates during a pandemic, maybe Dadonov’s production may be forgiven. His underlying metrics were not terrible. Even though his productions were down, he was not hurting the team when he was on the ice either.
According to HockeyViz.com’s data, Dadonov has a positive offensive impact while being an average defensive player.
Now 32 years of age, Dadonov is in the diminished returns stage of his career, so it may be naive to believe that he can return to the 60-point level that he showed in his age 28 and 29 seasons. At the same time, I believe there is enough evidence to support the idea that Dadonov’s production could be due for some regression next season.
The decision to protect fourth-liner like Austin Watson will spur some arguments — especially since it came at the expense of a more talented player like Dadonov. I understand some of the rationales fuelling the decision, however.
Austin Watson entered Ottawa with a lot of low expectations. He was expected to fill the fourth-line pugilist archetype, but I think he opened some eyes and showed he could bring some other elements to the team’s depth and penalty-killing units.
Rather than treat this exclusively as a Watson versus Dadonov debate, the decision feels more nuanced.
By making Dadonov available, the Senators have to be hoping that the Kraken take the remaining two years and $11.5 million owed to Dadonov off the books. With Connor Brown and Drake Batherson passing Dadonov on the depth chart, the Senators may look at the money owed to Dadonov and believe that it could be better allocated to address other areas of need.
Of course, it is one thing to say that the Senators could simply take that money and reinvest it in a better player (or players), but it’s another to actually go out and do it. You only have to look back at the team’s 2020 offseason additions to recognize that there needs to be an improvement in how this front office identifies NHL talent. Ideally, the addition of Pierre McGuire to the front office will help the organization avoid the pattern of mistakes that preceded his hire.
For the same reasons that Dadonov was made available, a similar case could have been made to expose Colin White. Although White is a more impactful defensive player who offers more positional flexibility, his offensive contributions are pretty modest. He scored 10 goals and 18 points in 45 games last season, but he safely projects to be a 30 to 40 point player when everything breaks right for him.
With four years left on the six-year deal that he signed in August of 2019, White’s salary escalates to $4.75 million in each of the next three seasons before spiking to $6.25 million in the contract’s final year. It’s that latter year that really creates some consternation and really clouds his future outlook with the Senators.
Unlike Dadonov however, White will not turn 26 until January of 2023, meaning that the Senators could buy White’s contract out at one-third the cost of what’s remaining on his deal next summer. To buy the remaining three years and $15.75 million of what’s owed to White next summer, CapFriendly.com’s calculator shows it would cost the Senators $5.25 million spread out over the course of the next six seasons (2022-23 through 2027-28). The Senators would save $10.5 million over this span while only being nailed for a cap hit of $875,000 in every year but the 2024-25 season. In 2024-25, the Senators would actually save $625,000 on the cap because of that inflated $6.25 million salary that White would have otherwise earned.
The 2021-22 season affords the Senators one last look at Colin White to decide whether they want to proceed with him or cut him loose in a trade or buyout.
Finally, it is no surprise to see the Senators protect Logan Brown. For all of the concerns regarding Brown’s ability to play with pace or to remain healthy enough to continue his development as a young player, the Senators protected an asset that has projectable upside.
Drafted 13th overall in 2016, it feels like Brown has been in the organization for a long time. There has been some anticipation for the 6’6” Brown to develop into an NHL regular because he brings some desirable elements to the table. Unfortunately, he has been riddled with a myriad of minor injuries that have limited to 124 professional games across the last four seasons.
The good news is that when he has been healthy, he has dominated at the AHL level. And as frustrating as these minor injuries are that have hampered his development, they are relatively acute in nature. They are not head injuries or major structural issues, so the hope is that he can kick this string of bad luck eventually.
In listening to the Senators brass speak about Logan, they still offer praise and seem supportive of the player’s future outlook. At the same time though, it is not like they are going to speak poorly on a young player and diminish his trade value further.
Looking at the alternatives that the Senators protected, no one has the upside of Logan Brown. Vitaly Abramov offers some upside if he ever decides to return to North America after his two-year commitment to the KHL expires, but aside from that, the rest of Ottawa’s available players reads like a list of AHLers and redundant and easily replaceable veterans.
At the goaltending position, it was really encouraging to see the Senators to avoid the optic-based decision to protect Matt Murray. Rather than throw more feigned confidence in the goaltender they traded for and rewarded with an expensive contract, the Senators used his bad season to protect their youngest goaltending asset in Filip Gustavsson.
Gustavsson shone in his tour of duty with the club after Joey Daccord was felled by a knee injury. In nine appearances with the Senators, Gustavsson gave the team their best goaltending of the season while compiling a 5-1-2 record and stopping 93.3 percent of the total shots. Of all the Senators goaltenders last season per Evolving-Hockey.com, Gustavsson was the only one who recorded a positive goals saved above expected mark (3.0 GSAx).
It probably helped Gustavsson’s case that he’s the youngest goalie available to protect, but there was some concern that Joey Daccord could be taken.
Those concerns are fuelled principally by the fact that Ottawa does not have many desirable players worthy of selection. Chris Tierney and Dadonov may ultimately wind up being picked, but both players can be replaced rather easily. Maybe Seattle could wind up selecting Abramov and hope that his game finds another level in Russia and eventually comes back overseas.
I find the concerns about losing a goaltender are overblown, however. In the list of available goaltenders, there are plenty of talented options for the Kraken to select. Ultimately, Seattle could decide that it wants to roll the dice on a Daccord so that they can have a young goaltending prospect who already has professional experience in their system and Daccord might make sense as a fit there. But, as disappointing as it would be to lose some depth at the position, but the Senators are well-covered after their recent drafts. The presence of Gustavsson, Mads Sogaard, Leevi Merilainen, Kevin Mandolese help guard against that possibility. And hell, with some rumours kicking around that the Senators may be interested in selecting Jespers Wallstedt or Sebastian Cossa with their 10th overall selection, if the Senators draft a goalie early, no one will be talking much about absorbing the loss of Daccord.
If there is any disappointment with Ottawa’s list of protected players, it could stem from the fact that many good players were exposed and management may have missed an opportunity to acquire one. It could have been a preferable option to protecting a fourth-liner in Austin Watson.
Unfortunately, this could simply be the result of players having movement clauses or competitors simply recognizing that it may be better to lose one player than trade one and then lose a second player through the expansion draft process.
As exciting as it could have been to see the Senators add some more talent through this process, it is still early in the offseason. There is still tons of time for them to investigate and exhaust other avenues to improve their roster.