We now know the 11 players the Bruins will be protecting from the Seattle Kraken ahead of Wednesday night's expansion draft.
The protection lists for 30 NHL teams (the Vegas Golden Knights are exempt from the draft as a recent expansion team themselves) were due on Saturday and began to be released Sunday morning. For the Bruins, there weren't any surprises.
Here is the Bruins' protection list:
Forwards (7): Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, David Pastrnak, Charlie Coyle, Craig Smith, Jake DeBrusk, Trent Frederic
Defensemen (3): Charlie McAvoy, Brandon Carlo, Matt Grzelcyk
Goalie (1): Dan Vladar
That means the following players have been exposed to Seattle: Forwards Nick Ritchie, Chris Wagner, Curtis Lazar, Karson Kuhlman and Ondrej Kase; defensemen Connor Clifton, Jeremy Lauzon and Jakub Zboril; and goalie Callum Booth.
Pending free agents like Taylor Hall, David Krejci, Mike Reilly and Tuukka Rask did not need to be protected unless they signed new deals before Saturday. In theory, the Kraken can now negotiate with any of them. If they were to sign one of them, which is not expected, that would count as their one pick from the Bruins.
Otherwise, the Bruins will have one more week of exclusive negotiating rights between Wednesday's expansion draft and the start of free agency on July 28. There is a league-mandated pause on trades and signings between now and Wednesday.
First- and second-year pros and players who did not meet minimum NHL games played requirements were also not eligible. For the Bruins, that made players like Jeremy Swayman, Jack Studnicka and Urho Vaakanainen exempt.
The only real question when it came to the Bruins' protection list was which two of DeBrusk, Frederic and Ritchie they would protect and which one they would expose.
As we explained here, protecting DeBrusk and Frederic and exposing Ritchie makes sense even though Ritchie had the best season of the three.
Even if the Bruins are looking to trade DeBrusk after his disastrous 2021 season, losing him for nothing to the Kraken would be poor asset management. Frederic is a former first-round pick signed on a cheap contract for the next two years, and he could still have some trade value.
Ritchie, meanwhile, is due for a raise as a restricted free agent with arbitration rights. That could make him less attractive to Seattle than DeBrusk or Frederic. It's also no lock that the Bruins even re-sign Ritchie, as they could instead decide to use that money towards a third-line upgrade in free agency.
Regardless, it still seems more likely the Kraken will take Clifton or Lauzon over Ritchie anyways. Seattle's selections will be announced in a live expansion draft show Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN2.
You can see all 30 teams' protected and available lists here.
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