One thing that came out of the protected lists roster reveal is that the Golden Knights stand to walk away with a very strong blue line.
They protected forwards Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel and Patric Hornqvist, defensemen Kris Letang, Justin Schultz, Brian Dumoulin and Olli Maatta and goalie Matt Murray. Anaheim wants to keep defensemen Sami Vatanen and Josh Manson, Columbus wants to keep goalie Joonas Korpisalo, forward Josh Anderson, and defenseman Jack Johnson, and NY wants to keep forwards Josh Bailey and Casey Cizikas.
Vatanen, a fifth-year player, won't be ready for the start of next season after having surgery to fix a shoulder injury.
Neal wasn't the only high-profile player left exposed by the Predators, who are coming off their first Stanley Cup Final appearance. Vegas could look at Boston's Colin Miller (24), Edmonton's Griffin Reinhart (23) and Buffalo's Zach Bogosian (26). Today, those lists became public.
Its going to take us a while to pick the team (Tuesday), because one change in this matrix affects everything with your cap now, with your cap going forward, with the cap that you have done for this expansion draft, with the cap that you need for the regular season, McPhee said.
The Vegas Golden Knights have said they want to build around youth, so they're using the upcoming expansion draft as a chance to load up on draft picks.
The first-ever pick in an National Hockey League expansion draft, going to the Los Angeles Kings in 1967, was Hall-of-Fame puckstopper Terry Sawchuk.
Teams went one of two routes when compiling who would be protected - either pulling aside seven forwards, three defensemen and one goaltender or eight skaters and one netminder.
Vegas will surely be looking to select players that can be part of their organization down the road (when they are ready to be competitive), but players closer to 30 years old or with short term left on their contracts may be selected based exclusively on their value to other teams. "It would be, 'Do we have too many players?' There are a lot of good players there".
Among the goalies available to Vegas: long-time Penguin Marc-Andre Fleury, promising German Philipp Grubauer and one-time Red Wings stud Petr Mrazek.
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The former Capitals GM also previously signed Washington defenseman Nate Schmidt out of college and Sharks right winger Joel Ward in free agency and traded for Flames right winger Troy Brouwer.
McPhee provided some fascinating food for thought in his press conference following the league's announcement of all 30 teams' available and protected players.
The expansion draft results will be announced Wednesday night at the NHL Awards show. Once the dust settles from the draft weekend, teams will prepare for the start of the annual unrestricted free agent market on July 1.
Chayka was exaggerating, but only slightly. Teams could also ask Vegas to pick an exposed player they're interested in, then get the Knights to subsequently flip him.
Ahead of the draft, the 30 other teams were able to protect a certain number of players from being drafted.
That doesn't mean the other GMs can't talk.
"We've got lots of things lined up, but until we see everything, we don't have anything", McPhee told reporters.
The expansion draft, I think the way its set up now is quite interesting, said Capitals assistant GM Ross Mahoney, who worked under McPhee for 17 years.
Blues general manager Doug Armstrong did not comment on the protection list Sunday.
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