I feel that many fans have their expectations way out of whack with these recent expansion teams when you're a team with extra protection room. Take Tampa for instance, say they're going to lose one of Palat, Gourde, Johnson, or Killorn. Does that mean a team like the Canucks can acquire one cheaply? Hell no, because can only take one so once they choose Tampa has no incentive to trade the left overs.
This really only works when a team only has one good target to lose in expansion. You can try to acquire them for cheap but your also competing against the expansion team who may accept payoffs to not take the player, and last time around Vegas made their price very cheap. Also, I'd imagine the number of teams that have only one good player to lose is going to be outnumbered a good deal by teams like the Canucks with an extra space or two. Even if Benning gets fired and we got a good GM it's not likely there will be anything to take advantage of.
Speaking of Tampa though, taking a quick look I'd imagine they'll protect 4 dmen Hedman, McDonagh, Sergachev, and Cernak, then the 4 obvious forwards Kucherov, Stamkos, Point, and Cirelli, then just let Seattle take one of those forwards mentioned at the top. Really not a bad thing because these are all $5M players so it clears some cap space for them. Or alternatively they could choose to protect 3/4 of them but then have to expose one of the 4 dmen.
Either way It's all pretty straightforward and there's nothing really in Tampa for a team like Vancouver to take advantage of. They have some control but Seattle will get a good player from them and that eliminates any need for them to trade anyone else.
Edit: I didn't see the above two posts and I'm not paying that close attention to other teams but yes if McDonagh is losing a step they could expose him.
