Protecting Today’s Kings in an NHL Expansion Draft

When the NHL closes the compliance buyout door, it opens a theoretical expansion draft window.

The 2014-15 season is so close and yet still far away enough that any news at all gets all of hockey fandom buzzing. Rumors about the NHL expanding to Seattle and Las Vegas have bubbled up previously, but this week a report from The Province called expanding to Vegas a “done deal,” and then Sports Illustrated suggested that the NHL might also expand to Quebec City and put another team in Toronto in 2017.

After Twitter exhausted every Las Vegas joke possible, as is Twitter’s duty, people realized that an expansion draft could be in the near future. Bill Daly’s telling us no, but our bodies are telling us yes. We could all enjoy being tied in knots watching to see which players were protected and which awful contracts would be left for the taking.

That’s Mike Richards’ music!

Just when it seemed like Kings fans could stop talking about whether to keep or ship Richards, here comes an opportunity to debate whether to protect him. We obviously don’t know what the team will look like in 2017, but we decided to list our protections based on how the roster looks now.

Here were the two options from the last expansion draft in 2000:

The second option is only open to teams with three goaltenders who have NHL experience, so the Kings can’t choose that route. With that in mind, here’s who we’d protect if the draft happened today.

 
We only differed in one place, and surprisingly it was not on whether to keep Mike Richards. Wipe the sweat off your brow, Richards. No second breakup from Jeff Carter after all.

Diane’s reasons: Keep Stoll for faceoffs and Richards because he had a shit season, but I don’t want to write him off. Also, with expansion teams picking and choosing, teams are going to be balanced weird, and obviously some people won’t work/fit with the team. Stoll and Richards will be much greater bargaining chips to make trades in the future if need be. I feel like Lombardi could finagle a deal selling Richards as a proven champ and leader to some newbie team that needs to be successful quicker, and then get like 8 players in return. Same idea with McNabb. The Kings could use the whole “young, dynamic D-man” thing as a way to pick up something better.

Chanelle’s reasons: Stoll is still useful, so really my choice is motivated by how I’d like to keep Carter at center and that seems less likely with five centers, assuming Richards does bounce back. I’d keep King because he’s stepped up on the top six at various times and wasn’t an embarrassment. Sometimes he was even great! Though Kopitar makes everyone greater. Either way, I think there’s value in keeping him. Plus he’s younger than Stoll and has a cute baby. To comment on McNabb, he’s unproven with the Kings but Matt Greene is already definitely slow, so I take the risk on McNabb.

We’re both sad to leave American Hero Trevor Lewis exposed, but even though he outdid himself with six! whole! goals! to his name during the 2013-14 regular season, we figure we could mail expansion teams a highlight reel of his 2-on-1s. This plan can’t fail.