Potential Seattle Protection

I'm a broken record here, but the same expansion suggestion is being made. There are too many quality Dmen out there for Seattle to take Skjei without getting additional assets. Sure, there can always be trades, but Dumba, Graves, Dunn, Giordano, Dillon, Lauzon, Cernak, (one of NSH's Ellis/Ekholm/Fabbro) are ALL better options and most of them with lower cap hits. That's 8 options for them. Skjei is $5.25M too much. Seattle can create a really good defense with the 8 players above.

IF CAR trades away Foegele then Seattle should take Lorentz. If CAR doesn't trade Foegele then Seattle takes which ever of Foegele/Fast doesn't get protected.

You have a very good point. If that's the case, then I would have us trading Foegele's RFA rights to a bubble playoff team with cap space for a 2nd or 3rd. That would leave Lorentz to get picked by Seattle. Thank you for putting your opinion in here.

I think we should protect Lorentz/Geekie over Fast because I don't think there is much of a drop in play from Fast to Lorentz/Geekie but they are both younger and have more team control because they expire as RFAs. It depends on whether or not you think we should keep Fast as a leader to a young team or not.

Honestly, I think the only way the expansion draft will hurt us is if we overpay for them to take Gardiner (or Skjei). My biggest worry is sending Suzuki or Drury and they become an all-star caliber player like Tuch and Theodore did.

We likely won't give Seattle prospects as a sweetener, we will give them picks. Though at this point it seems unlikely Gards goes to Seattle anyways since it sounds like Francis wants to take advantage of formerly GMing this club.