Armchair GM: Expansion draft fantasy

One of my all-time blogosphere favourites is Allan Mitchell, AKA Lowetide (check him out on Oilers Nation if you haven’t already). His writing is a joy to read, his work is thoughtful, and he has an insight unique to decades of careful observation (not too many decades, I’m sure – sorry Allan!). That’s my fawning pre-amble to this – I’m going to steal an exercise he did this morning on his site and re-create it for the Jets. If there was an expansion draft this summer, who would make a 1 Goalie, 5 defencemen, 9 forward protected list to represent that core of the team now and into the future?

Lowetide assumes the 2011 and 2012 draft classes would be automatically safe, so we’ll do the same. Scheifele and Trouba are safe! Who else would you protect? And what does that say about the Jets depth? My list:

* I don’t love Pavlevec’s contract, but he’s the best we have to protect

* I struggled to pick the defencemen. Hainsey is UFA this year, and I can hope we re-sign him. So he’s in. Stuart does a lot of work for the current Jets. I had a hard time picking between him, Postma and Redmond. Postma and Redmond do similar jobs on a team where Enstrom does that job better already. But can we really let both go? If just one, which one? Still, if those were actually our top 5 blueliners, the Jets would struggle with coverage and on the Penalty Kill, no doubt. So maybe Stuart?

* Clearly, another defencemen with a variety of tools (like Bogosian) should be a priority for the Jets. Good news – Trouba! Also, the upcoming draft has a number of talented two-way defencemen available.

* Man we need a better centre. I like Antropov a lot, but he’s also a UFA this summer. Perhaps he could take Wright’s protected spot if they got his name on an SPC, though the team seems to love Wright. Wellwood crossed my mind, but my honest thought was that he might get passed over because no one seems to get how good he is for his contract.

* This isn’t a surprise to anyone (including Jets management), but the Jets don’t have a lot of young players worth protecting. Klingberg and Telegin were the two I deemed more important to protect than current Jets at the bottom of the roster. I can imagine Cormier making someone’s list. None of them are guaranteed to be better than just keeping Slater and Wellwood in their place.

 

What do you think? Did I miss the mark? What does your 1-5-9 protected list look like?