For the sake of my curiosity, I played around with who I'd take in the expansion draft if I were Seattle and this is what I came up with:
Anaheim | D - Josh Mahura | RFA |
Arizona | RW - Tyler Pitlick | $1.75 million/1 year to UFA |
Boston | D - Connor Clifton | $1.0/2 to UFA |
Buffalo | G - Dustin Tokarski | $715k/1 to UFA |
Calgary | D - Mark Giordano | $6.75/1 to UFA |
Carolina | W - Nino Niederreiter | $5.25/1 to UFA |
Chicago | W/C - Adam Gaudette | RFA |
Colorado | W - Joonas Donskoi | $3.9/2 to UFA |
Columbus | C - Kevin Stenlund | $1.0/1 to RFA |
Dallas | D - Ben Gleason | RFA |
Detroit | D - Troy Stecher | $1.7/1 to UFA |
Edmonton | W - Tyler Benson | RFA |
Florida | G - Chris Dreidger | UFA |
LA | C - Blake Lizotte | $800k/1 to RFA |
Minnesota | D - Carson Soucy | $2.75/2 to UFA |
Montreal | D - Brett Kulak | $1.8/1 to UFA |
Nashville | C- Nick Cousins | $1.5/1 to UFA |
New Jersey | W - Nathan Bastian | $825/2 to RFA |
NYI | D - Sebastien Aho | $725k/1 to RFA |
NYR | W - Colin Blackwell | $725k/1 to UFA |
Ottawa | C - Chris Tierney | $3.5/1 to UFA |
Philadelphia | W - Nicolas Aube-Kubel | $1.0/1 to RFA |
Pittsburgh | W - Brandon Tanev | $3.5/4 to UFA |
San Jose | C - Dylan Gambrell | $1.1/1 to RFA |
St Louis | D - Vince Dunn | RFA |
Tampa | C - Tyler Johnson* | $5.0/3 to UFA |
Toronto | C - Jared McCann | $2.9/1 to RFA |
Vancouver | W - Matthew Highmore | $725k/1 to RFA |
Washington | G - Vitek Vanecek | $716k/1 to RFA |
Winnipeg | C - Mason Appleton | $900k/1 to RFA |
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- basically the idea here is to commit as little money past 21-22 as possible, especially to players over 30, while following the Vegas model and building a fast, high-motor team.
- obviously Seattle will do better than this because they can make trades. The only trade I assumed was the one dead certainty, which is that Seattle will surely cull major assets from Tampa for taking Tyler Johnson.
- this comes in at $50.5 million, just over the $49 million minimum needed from the expansion draft. From there it will be very easy to get to the $60 million cap floor.
- I tried to take a mix of a few quality veterans (Giordano, Niederreiter) close to UFA mixed with a bunch of younger/faster players with some upside.
- again, tried to pick veterans with only 1 year left so if the team is out of the playoffs it presents a potential haul at the 2022 deadline. The only money I committed past age 30 and past 1 year was to Johnson (again, trade for extra assets) and Brandon Tanev who I am a massive fan of.
- took Dreidger-Vanecek as the two goalies and a veteran for the AHL.
- toughest choice is Demelo vs. Appleton from Winnipeg. Would love to have Demelo on that blueline but Appleton is probably the highest-value asset available in the entire draft.
- took a lot of Cs assuming some could move to wing. There isn't any impact C there but McCann/Appleton/Tierney/Johnson is actually 4 very solid top-9 two-way centers. Easy to build a very good 4-line team from that foundation.
This leads to a roster something like :
Niederreiter-McCann-Blackwell
Johnson-Tierney-Gaudette
Tanev-Appleton-Donskoi
Bastian-Cousins-Pitlick
Soucy-Giordano
Dunn-Clifton
Mahura-Stecher
(sides not necessarily correct)
To me that looks not bad at all.