Quoting: Turner33
What are u paying Seattle to not take Girard, assuming it's 7_3? Have to protect Johnson, then makar n petro as well.
If you go 4_4 then kadri or bura are gone
Girard won't get exposed under any circumstances.
There are two scenario's in how this gets solved.
The first, revolves around Johnson not being protected.
On the one hand you can simply buy him out. Which would be a terrible result for Johnson as he would be removed from a contender after spending years waiting for the team to get good. Needless to say, if faced with the prospect of being bought out I'm sure he'd prefer to waive his NMC, especially if he gets told by Sakic that he'll trade a pick to make sure that Seattle don't pick him if he waives.
Alternatively Colorado could find a way to trade him since he has to provide a 19 team trade list. Obviously a trade is not an ideal scenario, but the threat of a trade can be used to entice him to waive. His odds of staying in Colorado are actually much higher if he were to waive.
The second option, is to go 4+4+1 instead of 7+3+1, and protecting Mackinnon, Rantanen, Landeskog, Kadri + Makar, Girard, Pietrangelo, Johnson.
Obviously it would hurt to lose Burakovsky, but that's not an insurmountable loss. We could also choose to trade Kadri before the ED and protect Burakovsky instead, and then simply have Newhook take over as 2C right away. In that scenario the forwards exposed would be Compher/Nichuskin/Donskoi who are all roughly the same quality so it wouldn't make much discernible difference who Seattle would pick out of those 3. The return on Kadri would likely be pretty good too, because 30+30 2C's with physical playstyle are hard to find.