For anyone who is new here, I need to explain something—I love expansion drafts. I don’t even really enjoy when professional sports leagues expand on the whole, but the moment when the expansion draft happens is beautiful to me. It’s a perfect marriage of game theory between the existing franchises and the new one. I have a history of caring too much about this.
There is no science to how teams will choose whom to protect. For the upcoming NHL Expansion Draft, it makes particular sense for the Detroit Red Wings, for instance, to dangle veterans—even if they are among the team’s best players, the Red Wings are going to be a last-place team with or without Danny DeKeyser. A team like the Tampa Bay Lightning, locked and loaded and trying to maximize damage to the rest of the league right now, might be a bit more protective of your Patricks Maroon or your Ondreii Palat than a rebuilding team.
The St. Louis Blues are closer to the Lightning than the Red Wings, but they are somewhere between the two extremes. The Blues are certainly an above-average NHL team right now, though not an inner-circle Stanley Cup contender (the same could have been said in 2019, to be extremely clear), but they also have an eye on the future. They don’t have a great farm system, but they also aren’t looking at trading all of their CHL and NCAA prospects for veterans, either. It’s a pretty nice spot.
But the Blues will, by definition, be losing a player to the Seattle Kraken. The Kraken, despite the Vegas Golden Knights’ success in 2017-18, probably aren’t going to become instant contenders, but that doesn’t mean they will be averse to acquiring high-end talent, particularly as they will still have a salary floor to reach. Unlike in expansion drafts in other sports, however, hockey teams ought to focus more on keeping their best players than trying to plan around who Seattle will pick, as Seattle will pick somebody.
The Blues still have a lot of season left—hopefully a lot of season—but that doesn’t mean teams shouldn’t plan ahead. Teams planned for years around this expansion draft, and the Blues have done a pretty good job. First, they have no players with no-move clauses, which means there are no players that they are required to protect. The Chicago Blackhawks will be forced to protect Brent Seabrook, despite the fact that he is now terrible at hockey, expensive, and, most hilariously, retired. The Blues will have no such albatrosses. Second, the Blues have several pending free agents among their core, which means several players they won’t need to protect. The Blues may not bring back Tyler Bozak, Mike Hoffman, or Jaden Schwartz, but even if they do, they certainly won’t protect any of them. The Kraken could technically select any of them, but each will become a free agent a few days later, so that would be stupid. And despite naming their team after an epic Online meme, I don’t think they’re that stupid.
Here are the eleven players—one goalie, three defensemen, and seven forwards—that I think the Blues should protect (not will, but should). They can protect four defensemen and four forwards if they so chose, but I’ll spoil the surprise—I won’t be advising that.
Goalie—Ville Husso: I should be clear—I think Jordan Binnington is a perfectly fine NHL goaltender and I believe he should be the team’s predominant starting goalie. But I also wouldn’t have given him the extension the Blues gave him during the season because, as I said, I think he’s merely perfectly fine. I think he’s extremely replaceable, and I think the Blues can find a sufficient replacement for less than $6 million over the next six seasons. While I have quite a bit of trepidation about Ville Husso, he will only make $750,000 next season and even if he never makes a step forward, it’s not as though he’s substantially holding back the Blues in the long term. Binnington might.
Defensemen—Vince Dunn, Torey Krug, Colton Parayko: As oft-critiqued as Vince Dunn has been for the Blues, he is the team’s second-leading scoring defenseman and he’s cheap—he made under $2 million this season and is still a restricted free agent. Given the expansion draft, and given that Torey Krug is in many ways just a rich man’s version of Vince Dunn, I wouldn’t hate the Blues trying to trade Vince Dunn, but short of that, they should absolutely not give him up in the expansion draft for nothing—he has some of the highest trade value on the team. While Colton Parayko has had a down 2021 season, he’s the team’s most reliable defensive defenseman and will still only be the team’s third-highest paid one for 2021-22 (I would imagine he’s a prime candidate for an extension before he reaches free agency in the summer of 2022). And the third spot really comes down to Torey Krug or Justin Faulk, who are on identical $6.5 million contracts for the next six seasons. While Faulk has bounced back nicely from his poor 2019-20 season and he is no longer a player I am absolutely dying to dangle to Seattle, Krug has been the more consistent performer over the last several seasons. As for Marco Scandella and Robert Bortuzzo, they aren’t especially flight risks. Niko Mikkola and Jake Walman are nice depth players, but if the Blues lose one to Seattle, the Kraken probably think quite a bit more highly of them than the Blues do.
Forwards—Sammy Blais, Jordan Kyrou, Ryan O’Reilly, David Perron, Zach Sanford, Brayden Schenn, Robert Thomas: Ryan O’Reilly and David Perron, the point-ish a game forwards, are givens—ironically, when Perron signed with the Blues, it seemed he would be a prime candidate to once again be exposed, as he was when Vegas selected him, but he has elevated his game to previously unthinkable levels. And Ryan O’Reilly is the team’s best overall player, and while he is tied for being the team’s most expensive player, a $7.5 million contract for one of the sport’s best 200-feet centers is a bargain. Jordan Kyrou hasn’t always been a lock, but the youngster has broken through in 2021 and is still on his entry-level contract. And while there is a case that Robert Thomas hasn’t quite become what Blues fans assumed he would become, he is still only 21 years old, has flashes of absolute brilliance, and is also on an ELC. These four are mortal locks.
Brayden Schenn once looked like Kraken-bait, but with 28 points in 42 games, his $6.5 million price tag is quite reasonable. Maybe a lesser team would dangle Schenn, but a team hoping to contend could use a player like him in its top six. Sammy Blais hasn’t quite become a star, but he’s still just twenty-four and is a solid middle-six type forward at just $1.5 million for next season. And while Zach Sanford’s defensive lapses have been a bit frustrating, he’s one of the team’s more lethal scoring threats and he’s still in restricted free agency.
This leaves a few solid forwards unprotected. Kyle Clifford isn’t a star but he’s reasonably cheap veteran depth. Oskar Sundqvist has been a solid bottom-six forward, but coming off an injury and at a not-exactly-cheap $2.75 million salary for the next two seasons, he isn’t quite indispensable. Ivan Barbashev nearly cracked my list of seven, but while he and Sanford are in similar situations contract and age-wise, I had to opt for the player who has been more of a scoring threat in recent days. But the real heartbreak was leaving Vladimir Tarasenko exposed.
It’s tough! And it’s not like Tarasenko has even been bad in 2021. But he hasn’t been a $7.5 million player. And this is a player who is nearly thirty—it is perfectly reasonable to wonder if Tarasenko will ever be the same again. But he’s been dealing with brutal injuries that tend to hamper and limit careers of players as they enter the latter stages of their careers. And I love Vladimir Tarasenko and if the Blues lost him to Seattle, I would absolutely pull for him to become the forward equivalent of Marc-Andre Fleury with the Vegas Golden Knights. But the tough truth is that Vladimir Tarasenko is no longer the no-doubter franchise player he was just two years ago. It’s a brutal sport and I now hate expansion drafts.
