Crossing Our T's & Dotting Our I's (part II)

Today the flood gates opened! Deputy Commishioner, Bill Daley, finally gave the hockey world some details for the expansion process at least with regards to the draft. I will touch on that in-depth shortly, but it is important to note two key statements. First, Bill Foley claims that he expects an announcement within the month. Secondly, at the longest-case scenario, Daley expects a decision no later than June. This roughly 3 month window is made even more enticing with the news from many of the Canadian media that almost everyone seems to believe 1) the NHL will award at least one team and 2) Las Vegas is the only one that will be added.

With that speculation out of the way, we can dive into what the current 30 teams are now gnawing over with the news that broke today. As the GM meetings wrapped up, today’s discussion was on the possible aspects of the expansion draft. The details leaked include:

-          Teams can protect up to 3 defensemen, 7 forwards, (or some combination of 8 skaters) and 1 goalie and each of the current teams can only lose 1 player (if one team is awarded) 

-          Players on their first or second year of an entry-level contract are ineligible to be drafted.

-          Teams must expose at least 25% of the previous year’s payroll.

-          The expectation is that players with no-move clauses/no-trade clauses will not be eligible, and further its possible those players must be included in a teams protected players list (as reported by Elliotte Friedman on yesterday’s Hockey Central at Noon on Sportsnet).

-          There was no scenario presented where teams are allowed to keep more than 1 goaltender.

Of interest past these nuggets are multiple opinions that teams this off-season will execute free agent deals with the strict intent to make those players available for an expansion draft, or that Vegas could select upcoming unrestricted free agents in the draft in order for them to receive any forthcoming compensatory picks in the next entry-level draft. Finally, all of these pieces need to be voted on by the NHL Player’s Association. The rumor that players with no-movement clauses  will be eligible is a two-front preposition; firstly, it means that that league is willing to stay on a positive relationship with the PA (which bodes well for a new CBA in 2018 without a lockout), and secondly it gives this process no foreseeable reason for it not to be approved by the players.

Now, if we take all of that into account, where does that leave us? For an example, let’s take the Stanley Cup Champion, Chicago Blackhawks, and see how Stan Bowman has to work with. In this exercise, let’s presume that the expansion draft will take place this June prior to the entry level draft. Also, let’s work within a system where any player with a no-movement clause will be eligible, and will count against the 11 players Chicago will be able to protect. Lastly, the Blackhawks currently has a cap hit of $71.234 million, meaning they need to expose at least $17.81 million for Las Vegas to select from.

Lets begin by removing those no-movement clause players. Bryan Bickell, Brent Seabrook, Corey Crawford, Nick Hjalmmarsson, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, and Jonathan Toews are safe. Second, we remove any player who is a 1^st or 2^nd year professional. Kyle Baun, Vincent Hinostroza, Tanner Kero, Artemni Panarin, Dillon Fournier, Erik Gustafsson, and Ville Pokka are also safe. Because Chicago has 7 players locked with NMCs, they are only allowed to protect 4 more (and all must be skaters since Crawford is already a protected goaltender). Those players I would suspect would be Artem Anisimov, Marian Hossa, Markus Kruger, and Teuvo Teravainen. Finally, we have our list of players which will be eligible for Las Vegas to select from (the total salary made available is $11.4175 million):

Player	2015-16 Salary	Contract
Desjardins	0.8
Fraser	0.65	RFA
Haggerty	0.925	ELC-3
McNeill	0.863333	ELC-3
Panik	0.975	RFA
Rasmussen	0.575	RFA
Ross	0.636667	ELC-3
Shaw	2	RFA
Brisebois	0.655	ELC-3
Rundblad	0.1
Schilling	0.575
Svedberg	0.575
Van Riemsdyk	0.925	ELC-3
Carruth	0.575	RFA
Darling	0.5875

With this group of players, you’ll notice that Chicago is roughly $6.4 million short of the minimum 25% rule, meaning that they will need to unprotect either 1) Marian Hossa AND Markus Kruger or 2) Anisimov AND Kruger in order to comply. That is where this is going to be extremely fun for Las Vegas’ fans, and will be as equally annoying for the other 30 teams and their fans.