Hey everyone! With the Seattle Expansion Draft going down tomorrow I thought it would be fun to do a little contest. The rules are simple:
1) You must
follow me on Twitter or have a HockeyBuzz account
2) Submit to me the 30 players you think Seattle will select.
I am not factoring in trades here. For example if the Hurricanes trade Seattle a first round pick and Niederreiter to not select Jake Bean and Seattle takes Morgan Geekie instead, Morgan Geekie is the only name I care about.
3) If multiple people guess correctly, I will select the one that submitted theirs first
4) I will accept posts up to 1 hour before the Expansion Draft
Whoever either guesses the full correct list or is closest
will win a $100USD gift card for the NHL Store. I hope you use that towards some Kraken swag but that is your choice.
Happy pickings!
Now the rest of my blog.
The roster I built yesterday which if you missed you can read
here, I attempted to build a roster purely based on taking the best players available and to try and add depth at all positions while also selecting pieces that could be dangled as trade chips.
Today I'm going to build a roster that likely won't look at good on paper, but one that I believe to be a more likely outcome. I did not title this blog "Exactly What Will Happen In The Expansion Draft," because I'm not that egotistical (usually). While many of the things I am about to suggest will not transpire, I believe the spirit of negotiations are more in line. With all that preamble I'm going to first throw down a roster and then we can discuss the details.
Johnsson(NJD) - Johansen(NAS) - Eberle(NYI)
Gourde(TAM) - Danault(MON) - Compher(COL)
Ritchie(BOS) - McCann(TOR) - Virtanen(VAN)
Khaira(EDM) - Gambrell(SAN) - Stenlund(CLB)
Abramov(OTT) - Gauthier(NYR) - Fischer(ARI)
Giordano(CAL) - DeMelo(WIN)
Oleksiak(DAL) - Stecher(DET)
Hagg(PHI) - Bean (CAR)
Clague(LAK) - Borgen(BUF)
Mahura(ANA)
Driedger(FLA)
Vanacek(WAS)
Kahkonen(MIN)
So how did we get here? Let me explain the methods to my madness.
First off, there are a few teams missing from this roster. I did select
Vladimir Tarasenko, Jason Zucker, and Malcolm Subban as well but I immediately traded all of them away. For argument's sake let's say I traded Tarasenko for a 1st and a prospect while retaining 2 million, Zucker with 1.5 million retained for a second and fifth, and Subban for a seventh. Cool.
I took Ryan Johansen but in a trade where I agree to select him but Nashville trades Seattle a second and a fifth round pick while retaining 2 million dollars in salary.
Next we have some of the pending UFA's that I have on the roster. Reports have implied that
Chris Driedger has all but signed a 3 year deal with the Kraken at 3.5 million.
Jamie Oleksiak would be a perfect shutdown second pairing option for Seattle and I would offer him 4.5 million over a four or five year deal.
Phillip Danault would be a perfect player for this roster. A brilliant two way centreman that performs excellent against the toughest competition. Offering him a four year deal at 5 million and the certainty he can be a top six centre may be enough to entice him.
Remember that between now and 7AM on Wednesday the Kraken have the ability to negotiate with any pending UFA's and if they come to an agreement than that counts as their pick from that team.
Doing some quick cap math the above roster should cost about 72 million dollars against the cap, leaving the team with roughly 10 million in cap space. For an added bonus, let's spend about 8 million on that on bringing in
Dougie Hamilton
Johnsson(NJD) - Johansen(NAS) - Eberle(NYI)
Gourde(TAM) - Danault(MON) - Compher(COL)
Ritchie(BOS) - McCann(TOR) - Virtanen(VAN)
Khaira(EDM) - Gambrell(SAN) - Stenlund(CLB)
Abramov(OTT) - Gauthier(NYR) - Fischer(ARI)
Giordano(CAL) - Hamilton(CAR)
Oleksiak(DAL) - DeMelo(WIN)
Hagg(PHI) - Stecher(DET)
Bean (CAR) - Mahura(ANA)
Clague(LAK) - Borgen(BUF)
Driedger(FLA)
Vanacek(WAS)
Kahkonen(MIN)
Again, I don't expect things to go exactly this way but I see this as a better template for Seattle; gain picks from taking on bad contracts, deal good but expensive players away for assets while retaining some salary, have a healthy number of RFA's for the future, and use cap space to entice free agents with dollars and term.
Tomorrow we will find out how close we all are.
Seattle Kraken Blogger • 
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