Before the Maple Leafs traded for Jared McCann, the word on the street for days, maybe weeks, has been that Seattle would take Alexander Kerfoot in the Expansion Draft. The Leafs would choose to protect four defencemen and four forwards and let Kerfoot go, with minimal regrets as they gained $3.5 million in cap space.
Now that the trade has taken place, clearly the Leafs have pivoted to the clever scheme of leveraging their protection slots and adding a forward to use one of the seven spaces in a seven and three protection formula, and Holl is going west.