What the regular draft could look like for the expansions

[diamond_ace 3,112]

Not a lot of info is released to the public as to how the draft will go for the expansion teams, so I'm going to be talking a lot in hypotheticals here. One thing that is known is that the expansion teams won't be in the lottery picks, so let's just take the exact middle of 5-12 each round - 8 and 9 sounds about right. Hypothetically, for the sake of the article, we'll just say that since a normal expansion draft's worth of players are divided among two teams, that these two teams get a bonus pick to offset that. For the sake of the article, we'll go 17-18, right after the lottery picks in the 2nd. That leaves 8/9, 17/18, 22/23, 34/35, 46/47, 58/59, and so on.

There are a lot of good players that will be available in the expansion draft, from a few teams. There will also be some... well, less good players available. I don't think it's exactly a secret that Toronto only has 11 total players, so only two of their players will be available, and it's almost certainly going to be some combination of inactives. Nonetheless, there are too many variables in the expansion draft to properly discuss that from the perspective of one of the teams to receive players - an individual team giving up a pick, on the other hand, only really has one variable. To make this work in the hypothetical sense, we're going to say that between the 5 players each team will receive, and their own GM players (both of whom are centers) that they've managed to get exactly one full line (3 forwards, 2 defense, and a backup goalie). Thus, they'll be going into the draft without positional needs, other than to balance the players they will acquire. This will not be taking into consideration trades - Condor Adrienne, for example, wants to go to an expansion, and perhaps one of them will try to trade up to get him, but that's way too much to consider for this type of article.

At 8/9, we're going to assume the top 7 in the Live S68 rankings are gone - that's Adrienne, Flowers, Eller, Underyew, Downey, Lehtinen, and Stansson. This will almost certainly not be how it goes - some of the teams at the top will need to take a player who can play down one more season for cap relief, so it wouldn't be surprising to see someone reach on Ryo Yamazuki II for example, as an established user where you know what you're getting from him, and could reasonably be stashed in the minors again to allow for an S61 player to get off the payroll. However, it's easier to assume the non-expansions will go straight down the board, at least at this point.

 

This means that at 8/9, Sigard Gunnar and Luciano Valentino are the top two on the board. However, an interesting thing to note is that the 10th player is A Red Guy, a clear favorite to win a starting job for a team that needs a starter. Based on this article written by me last week the only immediate starter jobs are the expansions and New York, so I'm going to project two different routes for the expansions here, one that shows a team drafting a goalie early and building around that, and another that shows a team waiting on goalie until later. Given the fact that four defensemen are already off the board (this draft is heavy with them at the top) the other expansion takes Valentino here to avoid missing on a positional run.

Expansion 1: A Red Guy

Expansion 2: Luciano Valentino

By the time 17 and 18 come around, New York will have had their second round pick, and I'm going to project they take Raymond Bernard there, but that Fang Flashback will still be around (more on Flashback in a little bit). In that case, the first 16 players in the rankings will be projected to be gone with the exception of Flashback, and that Bud Knight as the 17th player will be the other one to be gone. Again, this almost certainly won't be the case - some teams will have members they have more personal connection to, and sacrificing 15-20 TPE for something like that, or going for a guy they believe to be more active (such as Andrej Petrovic, who is a +6 in the arrows at the time of writing) could easily outweigh some spots in the rankings. We'll again project that the second team will wait on a goalie - honestly, with New York and the other expansion already having taken one in this article, they could still go for a while on that front. The first team will be projected to take Petrovic here, the boom potential of a guy with a +6 (and a guy who is an established vet and has at his peak made some fantastic players) is too much to pass up on. The second team, given they already have one defenseman in Valentino, will go Kaspars Claude. Claude is a guy who'll be shooting up the rankings when the rankings next get updated, and may not be around here, but has a lot of similarities to Petrovic.

 

Expansion 1: Andrej Petrovic

Expansion 2: Kaspars Claude

 

At 22/23, here's where I'm saying Flashback is gone. This will entirely depend on how much confidence Moscow has in Owen May to recover early form, and honestly I think they do, but there's value in taking a guy like Flashback here as a safe Plan B if May's issues resurface (and as valuable trade bait to a team like Helsinki or Riga to build around once Pepper and Kriketers start to wind down their careers, leaving Flashback with a starting role somewhere either way, if May remains the goalie of the future for Moscow). Moscow doesn't need a ton of help immediately, just for the guys they already have to develop, and they'll have a player coming in with their 1st rounder to replace whoever is taken in expansion anyway. Plus, and not that this would be taken into consideration in the real draft, this allows my hypotheticals to reset back to just going down the rankings and seeing who's there. As Kaspars Claude is outside the top 21 at the time of writing, my scenario at this point is the top 20 plus Claude are gone. Team 1 has taken a goalie and defenseman, team 2 has taken a defenseman and a left winger (although I'm not going to concern myself with getting the proper wings - if a team ends up with 2 LW and 0 RW, that's fine). This part of the draft is where we get into a few interesting prospects actually, and going just slightly off the board is almost certainly going to be profitable. Someone like Chad Gilbert might be a good one for Team 1 to start building a forward line with, as he's still active currently, and has been around to claim the theme bonus. Team 2, on the other hand, with a D/LW combo already, might go with someone like Fredrik Elmebeck here to round out that defensive pairing.

 

Expansion 1: Chad Gilbert

Expansion 2: Fredrik Elmebeck

 

In the old days, 34 and 35 would basically just be where the scraps would go, if there were any. In a modern draft, not only are there definitely still actives here, there are still a lot of them. Many good choices at this point in the draft, although there's a few who are projected to be gone here based on the rankings who are inactive or less active than players who are projected to be left. GMs will almost certainly notice this, and at this stage, it's a guarantee that the top 33 players in the rankings will absolutely not be the top 33 players drafted - in fact, I'd expect probably 10 or so players below the line to be gone and 10 or so players above the line to be around. Among the players in the "top 33" who I expect to be around at this stage, although in their cases it has nothing to do with activity, are Bruce Grimaldi and Samuel Ross. These two will only be there because they're goalies, and there are fewer teams that need goalies than there are goalies that need teams. Block Buster, at 36 in the rankings (one of the next few players after this spot) will also be here. This is around the time I expect teams to start taking these guys for value. However, there's still a team that needs a starter, and that's Team 2 of our expansions. I think we're getting just about to the point where even someone maximizing value would pick up a goalie if they need a future starter - in fact, at this stage, the "less active" backup they'll arguably have ended up with in the expansion draft might actually start the first season, because the player drafted could choose to stay down one more time. Team 1, already having secured a goalie, would be able to take just about what they want here - we'll project the top 35 to be gone with the exception of Grimaldi and Ross just for the sake of making it easy. Team 1 could take someone like Ondrej Ohradka, a player who is just coming off the back of a three week media and is clearly committed enough to the site to have done something like that in the first place. Team 2, however, will be basically just flipping the coin between Grimaldi and Ross, taking one now because both (and perhaps Buster as well) would likely be taken for value before it comes back to them. Let's say Ross goes here, just because he's joined a week later and is therefore on a slightly better pace than Grimaldi.

 

Expansion 1: Ondrej Ohradka

Expansion 2: Samuel Ross

 

At 46 and 47 we're starting to scramble for actives, which is why Grimaldi, Ross, and Buster will definitely be gone here. It's likely that Helsinki will grab one with their 4th as a hope the player develops behind Pepper, and perhaps Davos with a late 3rd to develop behind Davison since Pouta isn't quite on pace. Or really, at this stage, any team could take one, then if someone unexpectedly leaves the team with a spare goalie can trade one to the team with the departure. I'm going to just take guys late on that I think could have promise at this stage, and that will likely be what happens in the real draft as well, except some of these guys will be gone. Let's say Killy Foilen for team 1 and Balentine Kidd for team 2, both of whom are active and are right around this level in the rankings, although they may both be gone by then. It remains to be seen who will actually be here at this point in the draft, and it'll definitely look nothing like the rankings at this stage. This will leave team 1 with LW/C/RW/D/G from this draft and team 2 with LW/C/D/D/G.

 

Expansion 1: Killy Foilen

Expansion 2: Balentine Kidd

 

At 58 and 59, and this is as deep as I'll go (mostly because at this point it'll put me on 4 weeks worth) we're basically scraping the barrel. However, scraping the barrel isn't always a bad thing - there are guys at this stage in the draft who joined just before the cutoff to go into the next draft, and may very well end up outperforming their draft position by a lot. There may also, on the opposite side of things, be inactives who developed enough before they left to be half decent filler options if necessary or trade pieces if they're inactives belonging to users there's a chance of getting back. The actives will definitely be preferred, but also harder to find. One, however, stands out with a big green +7 next to his name, and that is Alex Armstrong. If he happens to be there at 58 (he won't be) this would be a no brainer pick for team 1. Team 2, on the other hand, could take a shot on someone like Raleigh Ritchie, who left for most of the season but came back and did an affiliate welfare recently. If he continues to be back, even as just an affiliate welfare guy, he could become a good piece.

 

Expansion 1: Alex Armstrong

Expansion 2: Raleigh Ritchie

This gives both teams one line of players through just the regular draft, and it's looking pretty good from that perspective.

Expansion 1: Ohradka-Gilbert-Foilen / Petrovic-Armstrong / Guy
Expansion 2: Claude-Kidd-Ritchie / Valentino-Elmebeck / Ross

2107 words
Kefka

[diamond_ace 3,112]

Been sitting on this damn thing since 5, waiting for the week to change

[McWolf 3,115]

2 minutes ago, diamond_ace said:

Been sitting on this damn thing since 5, waiting for the week to change

good thing you waited, else the updating police would have busted you

[Gustav 6,407]

Obligatory comment, as @diamond_ace wrote this article and I am not worthy.

[diamond_ace 3,112]

8 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

Obligatory comment, as @diamond_ace wrote this article and I am not worthy.

You're absolutely worthy

We need to have another writing comp

[diamond_ace 3,112]

Ni

[diamond_ace 3,112]

San (last week)

[diamond_ace 3,112]

Shi/Yon (this week)