As we wait impatiently for the 2021 Seattle Kraken expansion list to come out, I got to think about the Penguins’ protected vs. unprotected list for the 2017 Vegas expansion draft. I wrote about it here four years ago. This feels like a forever ago in so many ways.
Here were the players Pittsburgh protected. They chose the rarely used eight skater route (instead of getting to keep 7F + 3D) because they wanted to keep all four defensemen locked in..
Forwards: Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Phil Kessel, Patric Hornqvist
Defensemen: Kris Letang, Justin Schultz, Brian Dumoulin, Olli Maatta
Goalie: Matt Murray
The choices of Crosby, Malkin, Kessel and Letang were automatic, given their no movement clauses, but those guys were all slam dunks to be retained anyways, so no big deal there.