Blackhawks: Reacting to the expansion draft protection list

The Seattle Kraken’s expansion draft is just days away, and with the Chicago Blackhawks protection list up and ready to be talked about now is the time to react to everything going on.

The expansion draft is going to cost the Chicago Blackhawks some important player.

The Seattle Kraken are not going to get as lucky as the Vegas Golden Knights did. It seems like teams from around the league are trying to bait the Kraken to take a bad contract from them. Teams are playing it smart.

Here are some of the big-name players from around the league exposed in the expansion draft: Carey Price, Gabriel Landeskog, Ryan Johansen, Vladimir Tarasenko, Mark Giordano, Jonathan Drouin, Yanni Gourde,  Jason Zucker, Tyler Johnson, Jared McCann, and Kaapo Kahkonen.

Now there are different reasons that these guys were left available. When it comes to Tarasenko, it seems as though he and the Blues are no longer interested in moving forward together. Carey Price is exposed because of his cap hit and the hope is Seattle will not be interested in taking it on.

The Blackhawks have also shown their protection list. Check out everyone that is available and protected in this tweet from Scott Powers of The Athletic:

So the protected forwards are Henrik Borgstrom, Alex DeBrincat, Brandon Hagel, David Kampf, Patrick Kane, Dylan Strome, and Jonathan Toews. The protected defensemen are Caleb Jones, Connor Murphy, and Riley Stillman. The team also protected Kevin Lankinen as their goalie.

I cannot say I am particularly shocked about any of their choices to protect. Honestly, I am happy to see David Kampf on the list. If Alex Nylander was not exempt I think he would have taken Kampf’s spot here. Kampf was great this past season and should be a very good center for years to come in Chicago on the third or fourth line.

Seeing Stillman and Jones protected is also great. The team needs to build around these younger defensemen, and protecting Zadorov would have been a difficult choice for the team considering his contract is going to be large.

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I know there are some out there that like Zadorov, and I do not think he is going to be a threat to lose as Seattle probably will stay away from him with a contract extension projecting to be a little bit much especially for a new franchise that wants to use their cap space strategically.