Seattle Expansion Draft Series: Article 19 – First WIIM Writers Mock Drafts

Welcome back to our Seattle Expansion Draft Series. If you haven’t read the first article that lays out the rules of the expansion draft, that would be a good starting point, as I’ll only give the very basic rules in each of these follow up articles. If you are interested in Detroit, that was the second article and the seventh article.

For today’s article, we are going to be doing mock drafts. We have a few mock drafts from WIIM writers for you, and we’d love for you to post yours in the comments section. I will have a section at the bottom that will walk you through how to do that if you don’t know.

Just to get ahead of some obvious questions, I’m going to lay out a few things before we get started with the mock drafts.

I sent the same spreadsheet to some of our writers that you had access to in the last article. It’s still there, so if you didn’t make your team yet, you can still do it!

This list is the culmination of months of articles, talking to people who cover the vast majority of teams. There are going to be differences between the predictions I have here and the final protected lists. Some of the discussions happened weeks or months ago. I’m making some guesses and assumptions that may turn out to be wrong. Also, there could be trades or signings between now and when the rosters are due a couple weeks from now.

Also, while the protection predictions have been made through the lens of “what do we think teams will actually do,” these mock drafts are through the lens of “what would we do if we were selecting the team?”

Seattle has to hit the minimum cap without going over the max cap, so it’s very likely they will take a couple players who are overpaid to do that. Seattle has to take at least 14 forwards, at least 9 defensemen, and at least 3 goalies. The remaining four players can be allocated however they want. At least 20 of the players selected have to be under contract for next year.

So without further ado, let’s get to the mock drafts!

Jake – Forwards

Jake – Defense and Goalies

Jake – Reasoning

The Kraken appear to be a data-driven, analytical team. They’re going to look for the right fit for roster needs and role players. My shot at the expansion draft hopes to address a lot of those needs by blending seasoned playoff veterans with high-potential young players.

The biggest win for the Kraken comes on the defensive end. Here, they have an arsenal of excellent players at their disposal. From Ryan McDonagh to Vince Dunn, the Kraken have a wide variety of players to choose from to form their defensive pairings.

The offensive end doesn’t stack up as nicely as the defense, but the glut of blueliners at the Kraken’s disposal opens up a lot of opportunity for trade. Their top priority should be finding a scoring winger to slot alongside Matt Duchene. While Joe Pavelski and James van Riemsdyk are no slouches in their own end, Duchene will need players who can keep up with his speed.

In addition, the Kraken have three young goaltenders to work with Adin Hill, Vitak Vanacek, and Casey deSmith. With good goaltending, a strong defense, and solid offense, the Kraken look poised to make a splash in the Pacific Division.

Peter – Forwards

Peter – Defense and Goalies

Peter – Reasoning

I went with a roster with a lot of flexibility. Some of these players could be flipped to other teams for draft picks or other players. Seattle would have a lot of cap room to sign some veteran free agents.

The one big negative I saw when looking back at my team was that it didn’t really have any name players. Vegas started with Marc-Andre Fleury as the face of the franchise. I think Seattle would want to have a few more name players, although like I said earlier, the draft is not going to be the only way that Seattle puts together their team.

I did, however, go back and change my team to select P.K. Subban. His performance has declined a lot, but I can see him embracing the role of being the face of Seattle for at least the one season remaining on his contract. I’m probably wrong. Hell, I’m probably wrong about half these picks, but I love P.K. as a person and I would love to see him in that role, so I’m doing it.

I went with Talbot as a veteran presence in net, with a couple younger goalies Seattle could take a swing at. For Detroit, I went with Givani Smith. He’s shown me that he can play a checking winger role at the NHL level, and I love the energy he brings to the team.

I still think that Seattle likely takes Svechnikov if he’s unprotected, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them take Smith like I did.

JJ – Forwards

JJ – Defense and Goalies

JJ – Reasoning

I went with 4G to give them trade chips and took a few more reclamation chances while overall going pretty light on trying for UFA signings

Head to head I think Prashanth’s team is better but I’ve got UPSIDE!

Prashanth – Forwards and Defense

(He picked his team before we had the latest Anaheim updated predictions, so that’s why Fleury is here)

Prashanth – Goalies

Prashanth Reasoning

[It’s a] young team with some good veterans, lot of cap flexibility to turn things over, left myself some room to make moves in-season, and have a lot of guys who are RFA’s that may be valuable trade chips

I linked to the previous article at the top of this one, but here’s another link so you don’t have to scroll up again. That one tells you step by step the best way to choose your team. Once you have your team selected, you can do one of two things to post it in the comments.

Type it all out. Yeah, I know that’s a pain.
Post screenshots. As you can see above, I found the easiest way to do it was to take one screenshot of forwards and one of defensemen plus goalies. You can fit forwards and defense all on one if you want. Once you have those, you have to have them hosted somewhere online. Imgur is a free option that I use. In the comment section, click on the picture icon and paste the url into the box that pops up. In order to read the names, the images are going to be large, so you don’t even have to worry about resizing them.

Looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!

Also, I am very thankful to JJ, Prashanth, and Jake for taking the time to make mock drafts for this article. As always, I’m thankful to our readers for the great feedback and discussions over the last few months on this topic. I don’t always agree with what you have to say, but I do genuinely appreciate the chance to see different points of view. It could be me who’s wrong!

For now, the plan is to have one last Detroit article next week. Once the official protection lists are revealed, we’ll do another mock draft article using that information.

Article 1: The Rules
Article 2: Detroit (First Time)
Article 3: Anaheim and Arizona
Article 4: Boston and Buffalo
Article 5: Calgary and Carolina
Article 6 – Chicago and Colorado
Article 7 – Detroit (Second Time)
Quick Rules Update
Article 8 – Columbus and Dallas
Article 9 – Edmonton and Florida
Article 10 – Los Angeles and Minnesota
Article 11 – Montreal and Nashville
Article 12 – New Jersey and New York (Islanders)
Article 13 – New York (Rangers) and Ottawa Senators
Article 14 – Philadelphia and Pittsburgh
Article 15 – San Jose and St. Louis
Article 16 – Tampa Bay and Toronto
Article 17 – Vancouver, Washington, and Winnipeg
Article 18 – Updates and Final Predicted Protection List