Who the Toronto Maple Leafs Protect In Expansion Draft

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The Toronto Maple Leafs are well positioned for the upcoming expansion draft.

The Las Vegas Golden Knights might have the stupidest name this side of the Ottawa Red-Blacks, but they will draft their team nevertheless on June 18th. The results will be announced at the NHL awards on June 21st. While some teams are destined to lose valuable players, the Toronto Maple Leafs should find themselves in a decent enough position due to having so many ineligible players.

Teams can protect any combination of eight players and a goalie, or they can protect seven forwards, three defenseman and a goalie.

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The rules make it so that each team will have to expose a top-four defenseman or protect less forwards in exchange for not doing so.

All players who have no-movement clauses need to be protected.

All players who are in their first or second year in the NHL are ineligible.

Teams must expose at least two forwards and one defenseman who played 40 games this past season, or 70 over the course of the last two, and who are under contract for next year.

Some teams in the NHL are going to either have to make trades or lose high quality players. The Ducks for example have to protect Kevin Bieksa, so without risking a very good forward, they’ll have to expose Cam Folwer, Sami Vatenan or Josh Manson (as obviously Hampus Lindholm is Automatic).

This might not be a problem for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but it will still be interesting to see who they protect and expose.

Ineligible:

The Following Players do not need to be protected, as they are in the first or second year of their Entry-Level Contract:

Nathan Horton – Injured!
Auston Matthews
Sergei Kalinin
Mitch Marner
Tobias Lindberg
Dmytro Timashov
Zach Hyman
William Nylander
Nikita Soshnikov
Andreas Johnson
Nikita Zaitsev

Eligable to be Picked:

While the Toronto Maple Leafs don’t need to worry about protecting the above players, the following players are going to be available to the Knights if the Leafs don’t protect them.

Nazem Kadri
Tyler Bozak
James Van Riemsdyk
Connor Brown
Brandon Leipsic
Leo Komarov
Matt Martin
Seth Griffin
Josh Leivo
Ben Smith
Eric Fehr
Kerby Rychel
Morgan Rielly
Jake Gardiner
Alexy Marchenko
Martin Marincin
Connor Carrick
All goalies in the system not named Andersen

There are more, but I didn’t consider players like Lupul or Steve Orelesky who they obviously wouldn’t care about losing.

Who do the Toronto Maple Leafs Protect?

Remember, you have to protect a goalie, and that’s obviously Andersen. That means that Garrett Sparks and Antoine Bibeau have to be exposed.

This the most clear decision the Leafs have, and it’s not really a decision at all. Neither Bibeau or Sparks is worth anything in a trade, so it’s not like pre-draft moves have to be made here. All they can do is hope there are better goalies available to Las Vegas.

Other than goalies, the NHL has given teams the options to protect either seven forwards and three defenseman, or a total of eight players.

While I’d hate to lose Martin Marincin, there aren’t four defenseman worth protecting when you look at the forwards you’d lose if you did that. Therefore, the Leafs will obviously have to protect seven forwards and three defenseman.

While it’d be nice to make sure you don’t lose Marincin – who is a very useful player massively underrated by the fans of this team – he’s not worth keeping over the likes of Leipsic or Leivo.

D to Protect:

This is probably the easiest decision the Maple Leafs have. If there was ever a time to be happy about a lack of depth on the back-end, this is it!

The Leafs will clearly protect Morgan Rielly and Jake Gardiner without even thinking about it. The next choice is also fairly obvious.

Connor Carrick is a very effective NHL defenseman and has way too much potential to lose for nothing. Not to mention that he’s right handed in a league where that is pretty rare for a defenseman.

Carrick is nearly as automatic as the other two.

Polak and Hunwick are UFAs and wouldn’t be protected anyways.

The Leafs will then have to expose Marchenko (no loss there if he gets picked) and Marincin, who, depending on what forwards are exposed, is likely to be selected.

A low event player who doesn’t score much and thus only gets noticed when he screws up, Marincin is a giant of a player and one of the league’s most underrated guys. It sucks to expose him, but there is no way around it.

Forwards to Protect

The Leafs can protect seven forwards, unfortunately, that means either someone good is going to get selected or they have to make some pre-draft moves.

Let’s start with the obvious players who will be protected:

Connor Brown
Nazem Kadri
van Riemsdyk

That is it. There are just three out of seven spots that I can guarantee are protected. The Leafs happen to have more than seven forwards that they’d like to keep.

The goalie and the three D they protect are fairly obvious. But after Brown, JVR and Kadri, there are tough choices to make.

So from here on out, it’s just my opinion on who’d I would trade and protect.

The Candidates :

Bozak, Komarov, Martin, Rychel, Leipsic, Griffin, Leivo.

The Leafs can only keep four of the above players.

The easy answer is just to keep Komarov, Bozak, Martin and Leipsic, however, I think there is a better way to do it.

I would leave Bozak exposed, because I feel like he’d be selected for sure. He’s a valuable player and someone the Knights could flip for a younger asset at the trade deadline. Bozak is the easiest to replace because Nylander is wasted as a winger. Komarov offers elite defense and the Leafs are in no position to give up on young players who are cost controlled and may become much more valuable then they are today.

The fact is, you know what you’re losing in Bozak and that’s acceptable.

Final Protection List:

The Leafs should protect seven forwards, three defensemen and a goalie.

Goalie:

Frederik Anderson

Defense:

Connor Carrick

Jake Gardiner

Morgan Rielly

Forwards:

Nazem Kadri

Leo Komarov

Connor Brown

Brandan Leipsic

Josh Leivo

James van Riemsdyk

Kerby Rychel

That means that the Toronto Maple Leafs would leave Seth Griffith and Martin Marincin exposed. That sucks, but by leaving Bozak and Matt Martin also available, you hope the Knights pick one of them and leave you with the two guys you don’t want to lose but can’t keep.

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To me, losing Bozak or Martin is the best outcome of an expansion draft. It lets the Leafs keep all their younger players and all they lose is (potentially) one easy-to-replace veteran.

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