Ideally, you ask Staal to waive his NMC, then go 4-4, with Aho, Svechnikov, Teravainen and Trocheck as the protected forwards and Slavin, Pesce, a re-signed Hamilton and 1 of Skjei/Bean as the protected D. Even if Staal doesn’t waive, I think this is the best option. You still lose a good player, likely Geekie/Foegele/Fleury/Trocheck or either Bean/Skjei, whoever is left unprotected, but they’re going to lose a good player regardless.
Even better than ideal would be for better be braintrust to sweeten the pot enough for Francis to poach Gardiner, while keeping both Skjei and Bean. That would likely cost a lot though. I almost feel like they’ll figure out a way to protect who needs to be protected, lose a good player and move on.
It could get really convoluted if they don’t end re-signing Hamilton before the expansion draft as Hamilton wouldn’t need to be protected in that scenario since he wouldn’t yet be under contract. If they could work out a handshake agreement there with Hamilton, while extremely risky, they could easily go 7-3, protect more of the forwards they like and still end up protecting one of Skjei/Bean along with Pesce and Slavin.
All kinds of interesting scenarios to think about. Next offseason should be really interesting. I’m not too worried about it as the braintrust has done a pretty good job at roster construction so far. They’ll lose a good player, but they’ll still
be fine.