Hey guys, just wanted to chat and hear some thoughts about who we are going to lose in the expansion draft. I think it will most likely come down to kerfoot, compher or jost. If we hold on to barrie and can't get EJ to waive his NMC i think we would go 5 d and 3 forwards. This is my thoughts with hvaing to protect EJ and not moving barrie.

Mack
Rants
Landy
Johnson
Barrie
Girard
Makar
Zadorov.

I don't see us heavy in the free agent pool since we have such a deep d line now(who would have thought from 3 years ago) and need to protect them over our pool of third line centers to choose from. Plus with bowers and Kaut i think we can risk losing one of those guys. thoughts?

Take Kerfoot and we'll throw in a 2nd.

How do we even know who will be on the roster in 2 years?

I think we can expect a relatively similar team to now. The way Sakic wants to build from within, draft and develop players our future team is in the pipeline already and with the two more picks we have this year these are the players i believe we're going to use. Sure i assume we will sign a free agent here and there but those will be role players like the calvert/cole signings till we know who's drafted. But with so many good defense open to selection i don't see us signing to many big name forwards that would make us have to expose someone else.

Top candidates right now pending contracts and protection obviously, because IMO Seattle is paying close attention to the bubble guys on protection list:
Jost, Donskoi, Compher, Nichushkin, Graves, Zadorov, Grubauer, Francouz.
Obviously the Avs are going to go 7-3-1, so the locks on the protection list IMO are:
1.MacKinnon. 1. Makar 1.
2. Rantanen. 2. Girard
3. Ladeskog 3. EJ (NMC)
4. Kadri
5. Burakovsky
6.
7.

With the rise of graves do you think we move EJ or possibly buy him out after the end of next season? Doesn't help us at all to have to use a spot on his NMC. I also think compher will be pretty safe on the list as well, it's gonna be who's playing best to make the 7th roster spot, or if we sign another free agent.

No, what I think they do if they feel they need to is ask Johnson to waive his NMC, because I can’t see where Seattle would want a 32yr old defenseman making $6M. Johnson is a guy who is worth so much more to the Avs than another team. He has been great for Girard, he’s great in the locker room. Chemistry does matter. The Avs just need to accept they are going to lose ONE guy but it is only one guy that you deemed no better than your 11th best player.