We got some Bruins offseason news this week with Brandon Carlo signing a six-year extension and Kevan Miller announcing his retirement.
We’re about to get more, with the offseason really picking up over the next week. Every team except for the Vegas Golden Knights must submit their protection lists for the Seattle Kraken expansion draft by this Saturday. Then the Kraken announce their picks Wednesday night. And then the regular NHL draft takes place next Friday and Saturday.
With that in mind, it’s time to make some final predictions for what the Bruins’ protection list will look like, and which player they’ll ultimately lose to Seattle.
For a full explanation of how the expansion draft and protection lists work, click here for the official rules via NHL.com.
First off, we are going to assume the Bruins are not going to make any more signings between now and Saturday when they submit their list. There was a report Thursday that the Bruins and Taylor Hall are making progress towards an extension, which isn’t surprising.
We would expect any official announcements on a new deal with Hall -- or fellow pending free agents David Krejci, Tuukka Rask or Mike Reilly -- to come after the expansion draft. That would save the Bruins from having to protect any of those players, thus allowing them to protect others instead.
So, who will the Bruins protect? It continues to look like a safe bet that the Bruins will opt for the seven forwards/three defensemen/one goalie construction rather than eight skaters/one goalie.
Let’s work backwards. Goalie is pretty simple: The Bruins will protect Dan Vladar and expose Callum Booth. Rask and Jaroslav Halak are both free agents, so there's no need to protect them. Jeremy Swayman is ineligible for the expansion draft as a first-year pro, so Boston is all set there.
Defense is also pretty straightforward. Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo are obviously going to be protected. There seem to be some fans who think Matt Grzelcyk should be exposed, with his Game 6 performance against the Islanders leaving a bad taste and overshadowing a lot of his strong play before then. The Bruins will not be so reactionary. He’s a better player and bigger part of the team than any of the other defensemen they’d protect over him.
That would leave Jeremy Lauzon, Connor Clifton and Jakub Zboril exposed on the blue line. Urho Vaakanainen and other prospects are not eligible for the draft.
Forward is the only place where there are any real questions for the Bruins, and those only come in the last two spots. Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and Charlie Coyle must be protected because of their no-movement clauses. Bergeron and Marchand obviously would’ve been locks no matter what. Asking Coyle to waive his no-movement clause in order to be exposed wasn’t completely out of the question, but the Bruins elected to not go down that road.
David Pastrnak is another stone-cold lock to be protected. Craig Smith should be pretty close to a lock as well given how well he played as last season went on. That leaves the Bruins deciding between Trent Frederic, Jake DeBrusk and Nick Ritchie for the final two spots.
While Ritchie unquestionably had the best season of those three, the prediction here is that the Bruins will protect Frederic and DeBrusk and expose Ritchie.
The fact that the Bruins have already re-signed Frederic to a two-year extension seemingly tipped their hand a bit in terms of him being in their plans and intending to protect him. He’s two years younger than Ritchie, he’s cheaper, and he might have more trade value.
The Bruins may very well be looking to move on from DeBrusk this offseason after his disastrous 2021 campaign, but losing him to the Kraken for nothing would be really poor asset management given that he’s still a 24-year-old who’s two years removed from a 27-goal season.
Ritchie is in line for a raise as a restricted free agent, but it remains to be seen if the Bruins will be the team that gives it to him. Despite a career-high 15 goals in the regular season, Ritchie was ultimately part of the Bruins’ depth scoring problem in the playoffs, when he scored once in 11 games. The Bruins may decide to take the money they would pay him and use it towards a free-agent upgrade. Either way, losing Ritchie to Seattle wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Chris Wagner, Curtis Lazar, Karson Kuhlman and Ondrej Kase would join Ritchie as exposed forwards. Jack Studnicka and other forward prospects are ineligible.
The prediction here is the Kraken won’t take Ritchie anyways. I wrote about why the Kraken’s decision will probably come down to Lauzon or Clifton last month, and my opinion hasn’t changed, for all the reasons outlined then.
While Clifton was better and more consistent than Lauzon last season, our final prediction is that Seattle takes Lauzon. As outlined last month, Lauzon is two years younger than Clifton, he’s under team control for longer, he’s bigger, and you can certainly make the case that he has more upside over the next few years than Clifton.
Either way, the Kraken certainly have a good resource in their corner when it comes to evaluating the Bruins’ exposed players, as they hired former Providence Bruins coach Jay Leach as an assistant coach last week.
It’s worth noting that Leach did speak very highly of Zboril after the 2019-20 P-Bruins season, so perhaps we shouldn’t completely rule out the Kraken taking him over both Lauzon and Clifton. That still seems unlikely, though, given how much less proven he is at the NHL level. We’ll stick with Lauzon as our final prediction.
It's also worth noting that the Bruins or any other team could work out a trade with the Kraken to have them take a certain player, but there doesn't seem to be any need for the Bruins to do that. They should be OK with losing any of the exposed players above and don't need to trade any assets to the Kraken to keep them away from any of them.