So I don't think we have too much more time left to learn much about this team before Expansion. I would say if I was building this team I might shift my focus to "what do I want my team to look like next season" and do my Expansion protections accordingly. The idea that smaller, faster skilled teams would be the "New NHL" has pretty much fallen by the wayside, because at the end of the day there are enough
bigger, faster, skilled/physical players to defeat that approach.
So here's the lineup I want for next year, say:
Forsberg - Johansen - Tomasino
Tolvanen - Granlund - Kunin
Trenin - Sissons - Jeannot
+ leftovers
Josi - Unicorn
Ekholm - Carrier
Filler - Fabbro
Up front I don't NEED Jarnkrok, Grimaldi, Duchene, or even Arvidsson moving forward. No matter what happens in Expansion, we're going to be left with some combination of them left over anyway. More than enough to fill out a roster. Maybe even all of them depending on who Seattle picks.
And then on D it has just become glaringly obvious that we can't function with Ellis on our top pair anymore. I don't have a clue how we find the perfect unicorn to pair with Josi, so maybe it has to just be Fabbro for now while the search continues. It would be nice to maximize our trade value return on Ellis, but frankly I'm ready to move past that ideal now. "It would be nice" is the key part of that statement. If we can get a decent pre-Expansion trade for him, great, if not, I'm not proposing to alter my protection decisions to accommodate that "nice to have".
So in my mind I'm already perfectly content to expose all of the following:
F - Duchene, Arvidsson, Jarnkrok, Cousins, Grimaldi, Pitlick
D - Ellis, Harpur, Borowiecki, Benning
The only remaining question in the above lineup framework is whether our best odds of retaining that desired core is by going 7-3-1 or 4-4-1. Either way, we would have some members of that core exposed. Tomasino and Tolvanen are exempt. Granlund is a UFA. We could assume that Seattle would be scared off by Johansen's contract. And if we have all of those other guys exposed, why would Seattle take Sissons? With those considerations we could go 4-4-1:
Forsberg - Kunin - Trenin - Jeannot
Josi - Ekholm - Carrier - Fabbro
Leaving the following smorgasborg of exposures for Seattle to fill their boots with:
F - Duchene, Johansen, Arvidsson, Sissons, Jarnkrok, Cousins, Grimaldi, Pitlick
D - Ellis, Harpur, Borowiecki, Benning
In the past we used to say "why on earth would Seattle take Trenin, Jeannot, or Carrier?" ... too unproven, they won't take them, they need blablabla instead, etc. But without trying to read Seattle's mind, I would rather lose any of the players/contracts I've left exposed than them. Maybe that's enough? Maybe we don't need to try to read Seattle's mind?