2027 NHL mock expansion draft: The protections lists

What would an expansion team look like in today’s NHL? It’s a legitimate question, now that the NHL is opening the process to potentially add another team in Texas. There is a long road before a potential expansion franchise can get into the roster-building process. But with the idea of a 33rd team in Houston or Austin one step closer to reality, it’s something to start thinking about. A new team has the benefit of two fairly recent experiences to learn from. The Vegas Golden Knights started as a group of misfits and quickly turned into a contender with one Stanley Cup and two final appearances in the past two years. The Seattle Kraken took a completely different approach with the same NHL expansion process, and have trended in the opposite direction. So what path would another expansion team take? What could a new roster realistically look like if there was an expansion draft after the 2026-27 season? That’s what we’re here to project. For the sake of consistency, the expansion draft rules would be the same as the last two drafts for Vegas and Seattle. To quickly brush up on that, it means all 32 franchises would lose one player and would two options for protecting players: Either seven forwards, three defensemen, and one goalie, or any combination of eight skaters and a goalie. Players with an active no-movement clause at the time of the draft (which would be in June 2027, before any new clauses kick in on July 1 of that year) have to be protected or asked to waive their no-movement clauses. First- and second-year professionals are exempt from the draft, as are players with potentially career-ending injuries (like Alex Pietrangelo). Teams also have to meet a few exposure requirements, with two forwards and one defensemen available who are 1) signed for 2027-28, 2) played in either 40-plus NHL games in 2026-27, or 70 games combined over the last two seasons. One goaltender, either under contract or an RFA, also has to be exposed. This is where we have to do a little bit of guesswork for this hypothetical exercise. Back in 2017 and 2021, teams prepared for these drafts by signing depth players to check off those boxes. So it’s a safe assumption that a team like the Bruins, who currently don’t have any eligible goalies signed for 2027-28 behind Jeremy Swayman, will change that ahead of the expansion draft. There’s also guesswork in projecting what rosters will look like by June 2027 because there will obviously be a ton of player movement between now and then. While we can assume some 2027 UFAs will extend early like Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar, and be locked in their current surroundings, who knows how the Dylan Larkin or Connor Hellebuyck situations shake out, or who will be the stars of the next trade deadline. So in Part 1 of this mock expansion draft project, here is each team’s projected protection lists, based on how rosters stand now, and some of the thinking behind the decisions we made. In the graphics below, a player in red has a full NMC and must be protected. Boston’s forward depth is fairly shallow and two of their better options, Pavel Zacha and Casey Mittelstadt will be UFAs. For that reason we opted to protect four defenseman, saving Jonathan Aspirot. Elias Lindholm was left exposed in the hopes of getting his contract off the books. The Sabres had four defensemen worth protecting and two key exemptions for Noah Ostlund and Konsta Helenius up front that helped make that decision easy. Of Buffalo’s key forwards, Josh Norris, Jack Quinn, and Ryan McLeod felt the easiest to expose. No difficult choices here; the Red Wings don’t even have three good defensemen, so we saved as many forwards as we could. Even if they weren’t very good either. With the depth of Florida’s top nine and top four (and a lot of NMCs), this was one of the more challenging teams. A good player was always going to shake loose. In order to save Anton Lundell, we needed to ask one of the veterans to waive their NMC and due to age, Brad Marchand was the choice. The same applies to the defense where the Panthers have four players with NMCs — someone has to waive. Sorry, Niko Mikkola! This was fairly straightforward, especially with Ivan Demidov being exempt. The Canadiens have four defenders worth holding onto and a thin enough forward group that there won’t be a major loss. Drake Batherson, Michael Amadio and Artem Zub all being UFAs makes the decision between 7-3-1 and 4-4-1 a little challenging. There are four forwards and three defensemen worth keeping, but after them it gets murky given the contract status. With all three unsigned, it was essentially a choice between Ridly Greig and Tyler Kleven; we opted for the former. Given that would push me to 7-3-1, we then protected the two UFAs hoping to keep them in the fold. One of the other key reasons for that is the assumption that Carter Yakemchuk would have the capability to replace Zub in Ottawa’s top four. Up front, there wasn’t an obvious internal option. Anthony Cirelli or Ryan McDonagh? The choice feels kind of obvious due to the age of the latter and that meant going with a 7-3-1 protection list. Conor Geekie and Dominic James having age on their side was the reason for protecting them over Pontus Holmberg or Yanni Gourde. Toronto’s dramatic drop-off up front after the big guns makes it an easy decision to go 4-4-1. Darren Raddysh, Jake McCabe and Emil Andrae feel like the defenders worth keeping around and that meant asking one of Chris Tanev or Morgan Rielly to waive their NMC. Given the rumors still swirling around Rielly, he was the choice to leave exposed. We had to ask William Carrier to waive his NMC to prioritize Seth Jarvis, Logan Stankoven, Jackson Blake, and Andrei Svechnikov up front. It leaves Jordan Staal exposed, only because he’s a UFA; if he chooses to continue his career, it’s more than likely going to be in Carolina. On the back end, Jaccob Slavin and K’Andre Miller were easy locks. The third slot depends on what happens with Alexander Nikishin this summer. He’s exempt from the draft, but if the Canes trade him this summer and find a strong replacement, that player could take Sean Walker’s protection slot. The big decision here comes down to Cole Sillinger and Mathieu Olivier for that last slot. The organization clearly values Olivier. Maybe that forces management to deal Sillinger before the draft to avoid losing him for nothing. If Jonas Siegenthaler can show more shutdown consistency, he could earn a protection slot back. For now, it belongs to Seamus Casey, who will be a third-year professional in 2026-27. It’s slim pickings for that last forward slot on Long Island. Ideally, the team can acquire someone more worthwhile to protect. For now, it goes to speedy Emil Heineman over Casey Cizikias, who will be a pending UFA at the time of the draft. We could have gone with eight skaters, to save one of Matthew Robertson or Sean Durzi, since the forward core is so weak. But it’s not worth risking Will Cuylle or Noah Laba, who has the footspeed a slow Rangers team needs at 3C. That NMC rule only applies to players signed through the following season. So a pending UFA like Evgeni Malkin gets exposed, in favor of some younger forwards like Rutger McGroarty and Thomas Novak. Erik Karlsson showed he’s still got it this past year, but the Penguins have the leeway to expose him too, since he’s a free agent. Since Noah Cates is officially Sean Couturier-lite, we asked the captain to waive his no-movement clause. Exposing him is a pretty low-risk move for Philly at this point in his career, and if he happens to get picked, this team should have the defensive depth to make up for it. Sure, the Capitals could have protected Alex Ovechkin for the optics. But let’s be a little more strategic here because a new team would only draft him knowing that he is 1) going to extend his career, and 2) sign there. Instead, Ivan Miroshnichenko gets the nod as the seventh forward. Martin Fehervary is the choice on defense over Matt Roy with their respective ages and trajectories in mind. The Blackhawks don’t have a lot of good players, so there weren’t many tough decisions. We kept the players with the most upside. I’m not sure how Jaden Schwartz got an NMC, but we’re going to need him to waive that. Aside from the obvious choices up front, our preference is to keep Zach L’Heureux around for his age and underrated defense. There were more good forwards to keep than defenders and the age of the defenders exposed made the decision to go 7-3-1 straightforward. This was a little tricky because the Stars have a fairly deep forward group, but that probably wasn’t worth losing the emerging Lian Bichsel on defense. We went 4-4-1 to protect him along with the other obvious candidates while asking Matt Duchene to waive his NMC. With the emergence of Jesper Wallstedt, it was necessary to ask Filip Gustavsson to waive his NMC. Aside from that decision, the age and recent decline of Jared Spurgeon made him not worth keeping over three forwards. Michael McCarron’s NMC doesn’t include expansion drafts, thankfully, so we were able to keep Bobby Brink instead. Getting out of Nicolas Hague’s contract would be nice, so he was left exposed in favor of the underrated Adam Wilsby. We also asked Jonathan Marchessault to waive his NMC to keep newcomer Nils Hoglander in the fold. After that, it was pretty easy going 7-3-1 as the Predators’ defensive depth isn’t strong enough to protect. Pavel Buchnevich and Cam Fowler have prohibitive enough contracts that it felt wise to leave them exposed — even if both are better than Pius Suter and Logan Mailloux, respectively. That was the only real choice to be made here. Utah’s forward depth made the decision to go 7-3-1 obvious. From there, it came down to Lawson Crouse or Barrett Hayton. The latter’s UFA status and recent offer sheet taking him there made the easy choice to be left exposed. On defense, we prefer the upside of Maveric Lamoureux to both Nate Schmidt and MacKenzie Weegar. The Mammoth just traded for Weegar, but getting out of his contract might be a blessing. The Jets have more depth on the back end than up front so 4-4-1 made the most sense. We did have to ask Adam Lowry to waive to make that happen, but that’s worth protecting Elias Salomonsson for. His upside is worth protecting over Neal Pionk’s bloated contract. Exemptions to players like Beckett Sennecke gave us more leeway to go 4-4-1, to 1) keep this up-and-coming blue line more intact after so many departures this summer, and 2) try to clear some bottom-six cap space. The Flames benefit from a bunch of exemptions, too, like Šimon Nemec and Zayne Parekh. So while Joel Farabee and Kevin Bahl may not be a part of the long-term vision in Calgary, it’s better to keep some of those players as future trade chips. With eight continuing NMCs, the Oilers have little flexibility. The decision to ask Trent Frederic to waive was easy, but Jason Dickinson’s clause threw an extra wrench and forced a 7-3-1 protection list to keep both Kasperi Kapanen and Vasily Podkolzin. There were three defensive NMCs to work around, too — none of which belong to Evan Bouchard. So someone else had to waive; we opted for Mattias Ekholm due to some age-related decline. But even with these two waivers, Ryan Shea, unfortunately, was exposed. The Kings have to start looking forward, not back. So, 37-year-old, pending UFA Drew Doughty was exposed, in case this new franchise wants a chance to negotiate his next contract. Our focus was on protecting players on the right side of 30 to play around L.A.’s best offensive generators, like Artemi Panarin, Adrian Kempe, and Kevin Fiala. Macklin Celebrini’s officially a third-year professional, so he has to be protected. But a bunch of the kids — Sam Dickinson, Michael Misa, and Ivar Stenberg — are exempt, which makes this process a lot easier. The only big question came down to that last defensive slot, which Luca Cagnoni won over Jacob Trouba. It’s hard to see anyone wanting the later years of his contract, so there is minimal risk of exposing him. Seattle’s tricky because newer additions Mackie Samoskevich and Bobby McMann likely take priority over Shane Wright at this point. The same goes for Berkly Catton and Ryan Winterton. But even if Wright doesn’t feel like a part of the long-term vision in Seattle, management shouldn’t risk losing him for nothing; so expansion could be what helps facilitate a trade sooner rather than later. By the time there’s another expansion draft, a lot of Vancouver’s core players with NMCs could all be gone. Until then, they take up a lot of these protection slots. Zeev Buium’s exemption makes room for Victor Mancini for the third spot on defense. Two original misfits face exposure: William Karlsson and Brayden McNabb. McNabb is very cost-effective, but it’s his age that lands him on the outside. Karlsson’s age is a part of the decision, but it comes down to his UFA status, and the Golden Knights always having to shuffle the deck to balance the books. But say there’s concern about Mark Stone’s next contract (or health), that could be what earns him that last protection slot in Vegas.