In the spirit of making the time between now and October pass as quickly as possible, SBN is doing a mock expansion draft, which you can read about, in its full glory, here. The idea is, poll readers to pick two cities to be the mock receivers of the new mock franchises, poll readers to name the franchises, have the 30 existing franchises (as represented by their blogs) decide which players to protect and which to leave exposed. And then, finally, two appointed GMs get to try to put two teams together. I actually don’t know if they’ve selected the GMs yet. I was hoping for Robert Bloch and Mike Milbury. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Anyway, it’s time for JftC to determine the Kings mock protected list.
Here are the rules:
- Teams can protect either 1 goalie, 5 defensemen and 9 forwards OR 2 goalies, 3 defensemen and 7 forwards.
- If you protect two goalies, at least one goalie left unprotected must have played in at least 10 games last season OR 25 games in the last two seasons combined. One game = at least 31 minutes.
- Each team must leave unprotected at least one defenseman who appeared in 40 games last season OR 70 games in the last two seasons combined.
- Each team must leave unprotected at least two forwards who appeared in 40 games last season OR 70 games in the last two seasons combined.
- Players who have not played 50 NHL games are automatically exempt./
I was going to use a poll to make the selections — and maybe I still will — but in looking at the Kings roster, it turns out there are very few decisions to make. Let’s run down the players.
All of the kids/prospects are exempt except for Jonathan Quick, Drew Doughty, Scott Parse, Oscar Moller and Wayne Simmonds. I’m referring to Trevor Lewis, Brayden Schenn, Jonathan Bernier, Andrei Loktionov, Alec Martinez, Rich Clune, Corey Elkins and Marc-Andre Cliche — all of whom have played NHL games but haven’t played 50; there was a point in the planning of this fake draft that exemption was going to be only for players who haven’t played an NHL game yet. That would have made for a very different list. With the exemption limit being 50 games, the Kings suddenly have it easy.
Nine forwards
Okay. I just decided we’re going to do it as a poll.
Five defensemen
One goalie
So, two of the eleven forwards will be exposed, two defensemen, and Erik Ersberg one goalie. As a point of strategy, know that the expansion GMs have to keep their team under the cap. And now that I think about it, I don’t think anyone mentioned to me if there’s a limit of how many players any one team can lose. I’ll have to check up on that and get back to you.
Remember: you’re voting on who is protected. The losers of the poll are the ones who are exposed.