I personally think Minnesota would also trade to avoid exposed goalie

Yikes....

I was thinking that too, but Talbot is getting old. 34 now. They could sign someone for less money

What parts would you change?

kadri is not being exposed.

Laughton will be protected

I had Colorado going 3-5-1. Mackinnon Rantanen Burakovsky, Johnson (NMC) Girard Graves Makar Toews. Miska in net

I had Philly protecting JVR, Vorachek, Konecny, Lindblom, Giroux (NMC), Couturier, Hayes (NMC) for forwards

JVR and Voracek don't have to be protected, their contracts are enough protection. Philly is looking to free cap this offseason so they are looking to move JVR or Voracek to improve the defense, so either Seattle takes one of JVR or Voracek or Philly will compensate them to take one.

Well that’s completely wrong. EJ waives (which reportedly he has agreed to already) if not he is bought out, and the Avs go MacK, Mikko, Landeskog, Kadri, Burakovsky, Jost, Nichushkin, Makar, Girard, Toews and Grubauer.

Even if they went 4-4-1 Kadri gets protected before Burakovsky and no way in hell they protect Miska because Miska doesn’t need to be protected.

Miska is the only goalie that has to be protected. He’s eligible to be taken and Grubauer is a UFA

If that’s true about Colorado and Johnson I still see them taking burakovsky over kadri if it comes down to it so we’ll agree to disagree on that.

Also, Landeskog is UFA and won’t have to be protected

I didn’t think they’d be looking to do that. They were still both productive players last year and Philly just needs a bounce back from hart to be a cup contender again. If they want to free cap space gostisbehere is the guy to move

They are not going 3-5-1

Graves? Seriously? Let Seattle take that over rated player

After Niskanen retitred Philly was left with no proper top pair D to play with Provorov which made our defense really bad. Hart will need a bounce back next season but his numbers weren't completely his fault cause he lost his confidence because the defense was so bad. Ghost will most likely be moved this offseason but that is not enough to make this team great again. Philly will also need a lot of cap to sign guys like Farabee, Couturier and Giroux next offseason.

Miska doesn’t have to be protected, he sucks. Not protecting UFA’s is a double edged sword, it gives Seattle an extra early window to talk to them and offer them a stupid contract. COL will be protecting Landy and Grubauer. You’re high wanting to protect Graves, he is BY FAR the most overrated Avalanche player and it isn’t even close. Sakic and Co WANT him to get picked because they have built in replacements. And nobody that knows how to construct a team exposes a 2C over a 3rd pairing dman that ridiculous. Also you protect a C over a forward, or if you are smart and don’t protect 5 freaking dman, you just protect the people I listed before. I can promise you not only won’t the Avs protect 5 dman, not a team in the league will do that.

Alright maybe I thought Graves was better than he was. But as for the UFAs there’s no need to protect them. Not a single team did it last year. There’s no point

Except last time there wasn’t a flat cap, and why let Seattle have an exclusive negotiation window? For the Avs what if Seattle says we are going to give Landeskog $9M to be our captain and face of the franchise in that window and all you had to do was protect him?

Colorado would be able to afford to give Landeskog 9mil. There’s no reason he’d leave one of the most elite cup contending teams for a salary that they could also give him

COL isn’t giving Landeskog $9M. Why risk giving SEA that exclusive window to do something stupid, and who are they going to protect that would be more valuable than him. Even if COL is forced to buy out EJ (their not going to because he will waive), there is no reason to not protect MacK, Mikko, Landy, Kadri, Burakovsky, whatever 2 other forwards you want to protect but Jost and Nichushkin make the most sense, Makar, Girard, Toews, and Grubauer. COL expects to lose someone and rather it be a $3M contract they can replace like Graves, Donskoi or Compher who they can all replace internally. Graves gets picked, they still have Byram, EJ, Timmins and MacDonald, Donskoi or Compher gets picked they have Newhook, Kaut, LOC, Bowers and Ranta. There just isn’t any reason to give SEA the opportunity to offer big money to someone or open the door to a sign a trade, don’t make your life complicated and give anybody an opening you don’t want to give.

Seattle already has an exclusive window to talk to free agents. For 72 hours before the expansion draft theyre allowed to negotiate with all pending UFAs. They would give Landeskog their best offer there, and if he declines all of the offers there would be no chance seattle selects him. UFAs are not getting protected because if seattle was going to get them, they’d be on the team before the draft.

If your worry is that leaving Landeskog exposed as a UFA would give seattle a chance to have an exclusive negotiating period, your opinion is misinformed, because they are already going to have an exclusive negotiation period before the draft no matter what. The only way to prevent that would be to sign him within the next week. Otherwise, if Landeskog is still a Colorado UFA on the day of the expansion draft, there will be no reason to protect him as they already know he won’t be playing for seattle because they already had their negotiations with him.

That’s not how it works. They can’t pitch guys that are protected, period. The 72 hour window is exclusively for unprotected player.

We can come back in a week when Landeskog is an unprotected UFA.

He won’t be. What is the impetus in giving SEA 72 hours to exclusively negotiate with him, where COL can’t even make a counter offer in the window? To protect Joonas Donskoi? I mean bro not to call you out, but you were insanely wrong about your initial post protecting 5 dman, then it is well they would leave Kadri exposed, and lastly you don’t even understand what the exclusive negotiating period is. You do understand SEA can give 8yr contracts to any UFA, and literally has $81.5M in cap space? Why borrow problems?

Because no teams did it last time and there’s no reason to do it this time. It’s not nearly the threat that you think it is. Come back to this in a week.

Crouse is protected Arizona’s list is probably Keller Kessel Schmaltz Dvorak Garland Crouse Fischer or larsson for forwards and Oel chychrun and Maybe Goligoski and not lybushkin because he’s a UFA and 1 has to be left unprotected and Kuemper for the goalie