Friend of the blog and former BLH writer Micah Kowalchuk sent me an interesting message the other day talking about how the Oilers could very well find themselves a good young dman closer to the expansion draft next summer rather than digging around and overpaying for one this summer. Here’s the message I got from him:
“If you play around with General Fanager’s expansion draft calculator, these are the teams that, between the defense they have on the roster and their forwards, likely have to expose a good RHD:
Columbus, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Winnipeg
Columbus has a ton of NMCs, and likely have to expose one of Johnson, Murray or Savard
Florida has a ton of high end young talent that has to be protected at forward and just signed some high value defenders or traded for some, and may have to make Pysyk or Demers available (odd as that is).
Minnesota has a ton of young players on the roster as well, and unless they want to exposure Suter or Spurgeon (which is unlikely), they probably have to put Brodin or Dumba up on the market.
Winnipeg also has the “plenty of young talent” problem, and burning all their protection slots on right side defenders seems unlikely, so Trouba or even Myers may be on market
Colorado has the young talent issue as well, with the likelihood of having to exposure Barrie or Zadorov as a concern”
Let’s take a gander at the teams’ defensive depth charts from www.rosterresource.com. I sorted them leftie/rightie and highlighted the ones I think the teams would choose to keep if they had the choice. Players with movement clauses were also highlighted.
COLUMBUS (link)
Ryan Murray – Seth Jones
Jack Johnson – David Savard
Dean Kukan – Dalton Prout
Zach Werenski – John Ramage
Dillon Heatherington – Blake Siebenaler
Oleg Yevenko – Jaime Sefers
Jacob Graves
Markus Nutivaara
The Blue Jackets are a little bit blessed in that they don’t have any movement clauses on the back-end. I reckon they’d be happy to move on from Jack Johnson in order to fit Zach Werenski into the lineup.
COLORADO (link)
Francois Beauchemin – Erik Johnson
Fedor Tyutin – Tyson Barrie
Chris Bigras – Eric Gelinas
– Patrick Wiercioch
– Nikita Zadorov
Ryan Stanton – Mat Clark
Duncan Siemens
Mason Geertsen
Cody Corbett
Anton Lindholm
Sergei Boigov
Colorado is in a bit of a pickle here. Did they sign Wiercioch with the intention to trade Barrie? What will come of Zadorov? Interesting team to pick at for the Oilers if the opportunity arises.
FLORIDA (link)
Keith Yandle – Aaron Ekblad
Jakub Kindl – Jason Demers
Michael Matheson – Mark Pysyk
– Alex Petrovic
– Linus Holtstrom
Michael Downing – Steve Kampfer
Jonathan Racine – Jayce Hawryluk
Ian McCoshen – Mackenzie Weegar
– Josh Brown
– Brent Regner
Now this is a team with some depth! Wow! I know they are high on Matheson, so I have to wonder if he plays enough games whether he’ll need to be protected or not. Pysyk, Kindl, Petrovic, and Hultstrom look to be cannon fodder for the expansion draft if they are kept all year. Although, that being said, they’re all on one year deals apart from the Swede. So they’d be free agents…
MINNESOTA (link)
Ryan Suter – Jared Spurgeon
Marco Scandella – Matt Dumba
Jonas Brodin – Christian Folin
Mike Reilly
Nate Prosser
Victor Bartley – Hunter Warner
Gustav Olofsson – Alex Gudbranson
Dylan Labbe
Nick Seeler
Guillaume Gelinas
Zach Palmquist
Now here’s a team in trouble for the expansion draft. They’ve got Parise, Koivu, and Pominville with movement/trade clauses along with young players like Charlie Coyle, Mikael Granlund, and Nino Niederreiter needing to be protected too. Eric Staal is also someone they’d have to consider protecting. I expect some real movement from the Wild this year.
The Oilers should really try to lean on Wild GM Chuck Fletcher this year to get a good talent for a bargain price but from the sounds of how things went at the draft, I’d be surprised if Chiarelli could come to an agreement on a deal with Fletcher. Especially after what Shero did getting Hall for Larsson. (God I hope Larsson turns out to be the next Charlie Huddy or something similar)
WINNIPEG (link)
Ben Chariot – Dustin Byfuglien
Toby Enstrom – Tyler Myers
Mark Stuart – Jacob Trouba
– Paul Postma
Josh Morrisey – Jan Kostalek
Julian Melchiori – Nelson Nogier
Brenden Kichton
Brian Strait
The Jets might be another team ripe for the picking… Wheeler and Little have clauses as well as Byfuglien, Enstrom, and Stuart. That only leaves them two spots to protect Myers, Trouba, or Scheifele…
So Micah does bring up a good point right? Do you think that the teams mentioned above are as handcuffed as Micah believes they are? Let us know in the comments below!
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I’d also mention the Oilers have the ability to do what has apparently occurred in previous expansion drafts, calling up Las Vegas and offering a particular player in exchange for Vegas “Drafting” a player or two of their choice. Now, you look at those available players, and all the hypothetical vegas team rosters, what Vegas likely can’t get is a true #1 C.
If you’re the Oilers, and with Drai and McDavid needing to get paid, you likely have to cut loose Eberle or RNH. Let’s take RNH as the player then. Now, you’ll need to get a good 3C back to replace him, and you want that 2nd pairing RHD puck mover.
There’s a very good chance Vegas would happily take RNH as their new 1C in exchange for providing the Oilers their choice of a RHD and a 3C from the expansion draft, giving PC an entirely different way to go about trading for one with a team that’ll have a large number of solid 2nd pairing RHD and 3Cs to pick from, but could really use the asset we have to deal.