Expansion Draft Protection Lists Announced: Detroit Protects Lindstrom Over Stecher

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. Previous articles focusing on Detroit in this series were the second article, the seventh article, and the twentieth article.

Today, the expansion draft protection lists were revealed. Here are the players Detroit protected.

Thomas Greiss

Filip Hronek
Nick Leddy
Gustav Lindstrom

Dylan Larkin
Tyler Bertuzzi
Jakub Vrana
Robby Fabbri
Michael Rasmussen
Adam Erne
Givani Smith

(Players in italics are different from my final projections)

First of all, before I forget. A lot of info about other team’s lists leaked out starting yesterday afternoon. Unless I missed it, we never got a peep about Detroit’s picks. Just something to keep in mind when insiders and rumor sites tell you they know what Steve Yzerman is up to.

I’ve already written a ton on why it is a really bad choice to expose Stecher. You’re going to lose a NHL 2nd second pairing defenseman to protect someone who likely will never be that good.

It’s possible that there is a deal in place for Seattle to take someone else, but that would also be an unnecessary waste of resources.

Troy Stecher.

I want to get this article up pretty quickly, so I’ll add a link to the full protection lists when they are compiled into one easy location

I could just stop writing this section after that tweet, and it would be pretty accurate. Some of these decisions don’t make much sense.

You would have thought that NHL GMs would have learned from the Vegas draft, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

I’m going to post this with the Detroit info, then update below with some of the most interesting decisions from around the league

I always love when other people do work for me. The wonderful Mary Clarke, who know writes for the For the Win section of USA Today, put together all the lists in one location.

Here are a couple highlights. Obviously feel free to point out other “interesting” decisions in the comments.

Tampa was in a tough spot, but it’s going to suck to lose Gourde for nothing.

The NYI one is a little strange unless they have a side deal in place. Protecting Clutterbuck over Eberle is…interesting.