The Colorado Avalanche, as have all teams, have released their list of protected players for the 2017 Expansion Draft. Surprisingly to me, they went with the 11-player option, meaning seven forwards, three defensemen and a goalie. I didn’t think they had that many players worth protecting.
They kind of didn’t. Here’s who was on the protected list:
- Matt Duchene, forward
- Nathan MacKinnon, forward
- Gabriel Landeskog, forward
- Sven Andrighetto, forward
- Matthew Nieto, forward
- Blake Comeau, forward
- Rocco Grimaldi, forward
- Erik Johnson, defenseman
- Tyson Barrie, defenseman
- Nikita Zadorov, defenseman
- Semyon Varlamov, goalie
I have no idea why the Colorado Avalanche went the 7-3-1 route.