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With the somewhat surprising rumblings emerging that there is a possibility of an expansion franchise being awarded to the city of Seattle we here at AIH chose to look at just who would make up that new team. Of course this is all hypothetical, as a draft such as this would occur in June before the draft or free agency occurred.
Following the previous models of expansion drafts, most recently in June of 2000 when Minnesota and Columbus got the chance to pick a rag tag group of players from a list that their NHL counterparts had chosen not to protect. When Geoff Sanderson is the best of that bunch, you know that there's not a lot to choose from. Which is not meant to be a slight to Sanderson, who put in 355 NHL goals and was more than capable of contributing to his team, but is meant to show that there were no superstars available for the choosing.
The reason for that was that each team was allowed to select players they would protect from being chosen. They had the option of protecting 1 goalie, 5 defenders and 9 forwards, or they could protect 2 goalies but that would mean they could only protect 3 defenders and 7 forwards. There were also stipulations on ensuring that some players with experience were left open to be chosen, such as a defender per team that had played 40 NHL games the previous season, or 70 in the previous 2. There is yet another stipulation protecting first or second year players.Only one player is to be chosen from any team.
With these rules in mind, we looked at the current NHL rosters to try to determine who would be protected by each team, and then drafted a team from the remaining pool of players.
So with the lists compiled, all that's left is to do the draft. Here's how the new team turned out:
SEATTLE SCREECHOWLS***
| G | Niklas Backstrom | Minnesota |
| G | Ben Bishop | Tampa Bay |
| G | Ben Scrivens | Los Angeles |
| D | Raphael Diaz | Montreal |
| D | Scott Hannan | San Jose |
| D | Ed Jovanovski | Florida |
| D | Adam McQuaid | Boston |
| D | Derek Morris | Phoenix |
| D | Shane O`Brien | Calgary |
| D | Michal Rozsival | Chicago |
| D | Nick Schultz | Edmonton |
| D | Mark Streit | Philadelphia |
| D | Mark Stuart | Winnipeg |
| D | Henrik Tallinder | Buffalo |
| F | Jared Boll | Columbus |
| F | Dave Bolland | Toronto |
| F | Erik Cole | Dallas |
| F | Jason Chimera | Washington |
| F | Patrick Dwyer | Carolina |
| F | Tanner Glass | Pittsburgh |
| F | Matt Hendricks | Nashville |
| F | Clarke MacArthur | Ottawa |
| F | Matt Martin | New York Islanders |
| F | Cody McLeod | Colorado |
| F | Dominic Moore | New York Rangers |
| F | Magnus Paajarvi | St. Louis |
| F | Mikael Samuelsson | Detroit |
| F | Jordan Schroeder | Vancouver |
| F | Daniel Winnik | Anaheim |
| F | Dainius Zubrus | New Jersey |
So there it is. Naturally, the roster would be subject to the draft, so a Seth Jones or Nathan MacKinnon would be in there. You would also have free agent acquisitions like Brad Boyes, Peter Mueller or Ron Hainsey. Don't laugh: he'd easily make this team.
Disagree? Of course you do!Let us know what you would have done differently in the comments section below.
***Editor's Note: With much love to Roy Macgregor and his Screechowls books.