Well, it's not even exactly clear what they mean by exposing 25% of their previous year's payroll. Do they mean payroll as in salary dollars? Do they mean cap hit? They said AHL counts for the purposes of determining if a player is a 1- or 2-year pro. But what does it mean in terms of salary? Is Melchiori's exposure worth 650k or $70k or whatever his AHL salary is?
If teams are allowed to protect 7F/3D/1G or 8 skaters/1G and NMCs are automatically protected, then the Jets would have to protect Enstrom, Buff and you'd think Trouba would get the 3rd D slot. Which would leave Myers open. They could choose the 8 skaters option and protect Myers as well, but then they'd have to expose 3 additional forwards. 3 of: Wheeler, Scheifele, Little, Perreault, Dano, Armia, Lowry. I suppose losing one of Dano, Armia or Lowry is a lot better than losing Myers.
Of course if there are 2 expansion teams, you could lose 2 of Dano, Armia and Lowry.
Taking Myers $5.5M cap hit out of the exposure list would be a big problem as well if pending UFAs are excluded from the expansion draft. Although I suppose the three forwards combined might make a significant fraction of $5.5M. $3.5M maybe? $16.825M exposed would be enough for a $67.3M cap.
If pending UFAs are allowed to count towards the exposure dollars, then there's no problem. Pavelec, Stafford and Thorbz = nearly $10M.