The Montreal Canadiens did not lose much in the last expansion draft.
Alexei Emelin was selected by the Vegas Golden Knights, quickly traded for a third round pick to the Nashville Predators, played one more NHL season as a third pairing defender and then moved back to Russia to play in the KHL.
Other teams did not fare out so well.
The Golden Knights talked the Minnesota Wild into giving up Alex Tuch as well as Erik Haula so they could keep Matt Dumba. The Florida Panthers talked the Golden Knights into taking Reilly Smith and Jonathan Marchessault for some reason. William Karlsson left the Columbus Blue Jackets and immediately scored 40 goals. The Anaheim Ducks lost Shea Theodore who quickly blossomed into a top pairing defender. The list goes on.
A handful of teams gave up draft picks to influence which player they would end up losing.
Though the Canadiens didn’t have to worry about any of those back door deals last time, they might have to consider it with the Seattle Kraken later this month.
They will definitely want to keep their goaltending tandem of Carey Price and Jake Allen together, but can only protect one of them. They may be enticed to to offer up a middle round pick to keep Allen out of the Kraken’s hands, or they might just stand pat and let the Kraken make their choice.
Although, with a closer look at their roster, they might not be able to just stand pat.
Teams are allowed to protect either 7 forwards, 3 defencemen and 1 goaltender or 8 skaters and 1 goaltender. However, they also have to expose a certain number of players at each position.
Each team has to expose two forwards who are signed for next season and have also played either 27 games this season or a total of 54 games over the past two seasons. Every team must expose at least one defenceman who meets the same criteria and a goaltender who is signed through next season.
The Canadiens meet the goaltending criteria with Allen and have plenty of defenders signed through next season. It’s up front where they might have a little work to do.
If the Habs choose to protect seven forwards, it’s pretty clear that Tyler Toffoli, Brendan Gallagher, Josh Anderson and Jesperi Kotkaniemi will be on the list. The only other forwards who are signed through next season right now are Paul Byron, Jonathan Drouin and Jake Evans.
Regardless of who is protected in those last few spots, the Habs would currently need to expose two of those three players listed above. Ideally, they would protect Drouin, Evans and Artturi Lehkonen along with Toffoli, Gallagher, Anderson and Kotkaniemi.
If they do that, the only forward they are leaving exposed that is signed through next season is Byron. That doesn’t work because they need to leave two forwards exposed to Seattle that are signed for the 2021-22 year.
The easy fix is to just sign somebody, but they’ll have to act fast. They could just extend Corey Perry, Joel Armia or Eric Staal to a one year contract and leave them unprotected. It’s not the most difficult problem to solve, but the Canadiens are going to have to extend one of those veterans who played so well together on the fourth line in the playoffs by the end of the week.
Otherwise, they have to leave Jake Evans available to the Kraken and that would not be a wise decision.