Mock Expansion Draft – Protected Players – Nashville Predators

The first step to our mock draft is to establish the list of players that will be available for the Las Vegas franchise to draft. To do this, we decided to have a blogger from each team represent their own franchise and select the players that will be protected from the Mock Expansion Draft available player pool. To see the rules which were followed to protect players, hit this link.

Next up, we have the Nashville Predators. The Predators are being represented by Doug Praskach from Predlines.com.

Protected Players

• G – Pekka Rinne
• F – James Neal
• F – Craig Smith
• F – Colin Wilson
• F – Mike Ribeiro
• F – Calle Jarnkrok
• F – Cody Hodgson
• F – Viktor Arvidsson
• F – Filip Forsberg
• F – Mike Fisher
• D – Shea Weber
• D – Roman Josi
• D – Seth Jones
• D – Ryan Ellis
• D – Mattias Ekholm

Analysis from Predlines.com:

Probably the best players that were left off are Barret Jackman, Gabby Bourque, Paul Gaustad, Eric Nystrom, Victor Bartley, Carter Hutton. I could see the team protecting them, but we chose not to for this exercise.

The tough thing is that we have so many good young players that we had to expose a couple of good vets for Vegas to peruse.

The top five defensemen have to be keepers so you Barret Jackman and even Victor Bartley could easily be targeted in the draft.

Kevin Fiala and Steve Moses are in Milwaukee so while the team obviously would want to protect them, they are simply not ready yet. Gabriel Bourque is a fast young player that could help and he is mostly playing on our fourth line. Paul Gaustad will be an UFA at the end of the year but he is a great face off guy and leader.

The entire list of unprotected players that will be available for Team Lane and Team Pothier to select from can be found here.

To see more team explanations just like this one, check out The Sin Bin Mock Expansion Draft Landing Page.