Rangers have chance to “sell” extra defense protection spot for expansion draft

The NY Rangers now have potentially the best expansion draft positioning in the entire NHL. Even before the Tony DeAngelo fiasco, the Rangers were sitting pretty. Before that, it was likely one of Libor Hajek or Brett Howden getting selected by Seattle. Now with DeAngelo being left exposed, the Rangers have an extra defense spot to protect in the expansion draft.

The thing is, the Rangers don’t have any defensemen left worth protecting. Sure, they could use it on Hajek, but it’s becoming clearer with each passing game that he isn’t worthy of a protection spot. They can’t use that slot on an extra forward. K’Andre Miller and Adam Fox are both exempt. This now gives the Rangers a chance to be creative with that spot.

“Selling” the protection spot

I posed this scenario on Twitter, and a few people posed this as a viable option. It’s a sound theory. The Rangers make a trade with a team that has too many defensemen to protect. The Rangers acquire said defenseman in advance of the expansion draft for a low cost. After the expansion draft, the Rangers trade the player back.

The logic is sound, and it isn’t cap circumvention. There is a handshake agreement between the Rangers and whichever team they speak to about the second part of the deal. This is no different than Seattle getting draft picks for “future considerations.”

Eyeing Trade Partners

The first team that comes to mind is St. Louis. The Blues, a contender, have five defensemen –Torey Krug, Justin Faulk, Colton Parayko, Vince Dunn, Marco Scandella- that are worth protecting. In order to protect all five, they would need to go the 8 skaters/2 goalies protection route. That leaves a solid forward being exposed. The Rangers could take on Scandella or Dunn for a few days and protect them. They’d then swing them back to the Blues later on.

Colorado is another team that is in a rough spot. Only Conor Timmins and Bowen Byram are exempt on defense. They also have to protect Erik Johnson (NMC). That’s two defense spots left for Cale Makar (I think), Devon Toews, Samuel Girard, and Ryan Graves. Even if I’m wrong on Makar, it’s still two protection spots for three defensemen.

Calgary might be in a similar spot, but that really depends on what Mark Giordano does. Although I can’t see Seattle taking a 38 year old defenseman, given who else Calgary might expose.

What might these trades look like?

This is very difficult to gauge. To my knowledge, no trades of this nature have been made in the past. The good thing is that no actual salary changes hands here, since players aren’t paid in the offseason. There may be minor complications with no-trade clauses, but there are easy workarounds there.

Given this, draft picks seem so be the best way to approach this. Using Marco Scandella as the example, the Rangers could acquire him for a 6th round pick. They’d then send him back to St. Louis for a 3rd round pick (St. Louis doesn’t have a 2nd rounder this year).

Selling their extra protection spot on defense is just one way the Rangers can be creating here. This does assume the Rangers don’t spring an actual trade for a defenseman, of course. It will be interesting to see how the Rangers approach this situation this offseason.