I was just looking over the exposure requirements for the expansion draft and there are a couple of teams in a real predicament in which they won't be exposing enough players with 40 games this year or 70 in the past two who are under contract through 2021.
Calgary has this problem too with the only players who will end up meeting this requirement being Tkachuk, Gaudreau, Monahan, Backlund, Lucic (NMC), Lindholm, and Mangiapane. Unless they make a move they must expose two of them.
Columbus has a similar problem except its between Atkinson, Nyquist, Domi, Jenner, Bjorkstrand, Roslovic, and Eric Robinson.
I'm assuming all the teams in this type of position will just trade for a player meeting the exposure requirements or play players into the requirements.
Some of them will just re-sign a few depth pieces, like the Habs will do with Corey Perry imo. Calgary can qualify Bennett or trade him for a players who meet the requirements, and re-sign a guy like Derek Ryan for cheap.
I bet some RFAs (Kevin Stenlund on CBJ and perhaps Dominik Simon on CGY) will get extensions sometime prior to the expansion draft. That's one way around it at least
Your point is well taken. On the other side, some teams (notably Arizona and Nashville) have an excess of qualified forwards, so they may be more popular at the deadline than normal. And on the flip side of THAT, note that Arizona only has three qualified defensemen, including prospect Kyle Capobianco, so they would have to re-up Lyubushkin or Oesterle or find someone else.