The players Rangers exposed to Seattle’s NHL expansion draft

After dealing center Brett Howden to the Las Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday, the Rangers protected forward Kevin Rooney as their seventh forward.

The Rangers’ protection list for the upcoming expansion draft for the new Seattle Kraken franchise offered no major surprises.

The Blueshirts protected seven forwards, three defensemen and goalie Alexandar Georgiev, with their most notable exposures including newly acquired pending free agent Barclay Goodrow, fellow forwards Julien Gauthier, Colin Blackwell and Phillip Di Giuseppe, defensemen Tony DeAngelo, Anthony Bitetto and Brendan Smith and third-string goalie Keith Kinkaid.

After dealing center Brett Howden to the Las Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday, the Rangers protected forward Kevin Rooney as their seventh forward. The others protected were Artemi Panarin, Mike Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, Pavel Buchnevich, Ryan Strome and Filip Chytil, and defensemen Jacob Trouba, Ryan Lindgren and Libor Hajek.

The Rangers exposed newly acquired Barclay Goodrow to the NHL expansion draft.

The expansion draft will take place Wednesday, with Seattle selecting 30 players — one from each team’s availability list, excluding the Golden Knights, who joined the NHL in 2017. Teams were allowed to protect either eight skaters and one goalie or seven forwards, three defensemen and one goalie.

The Rangers exposed Julien Gauthier to the NHL expansion draft.

All first- and second-year professionals and unsigned draft choices, are exempt from selection and did not need to be protected. Norris Trophy winner Adam Fox, Kaapo Kakko, Alexis Lafreniere, K’Andre Miller and Igor Shesterkin fell into this category with the Rangers, among others.

The Rangers exposed Colin Blackwell to the NHL expansion draft.

Among those left available by the Islanders are mainstays Josh Bailey and Jordan Eberle, forwards Leo Komarov, Kieffer Bellows and Otto Koivula and defensemen Andy Greene and Sebastian Aho.

The Devils left former Norris Trophy winner P.K. Subban, who has a $9 million cap hit entering the final year of his contract, unprotected.

Other big names available for the Kraken include: Canadiens goalie Carey Price, 2019 Norris winner Mark Giordano (Flames) and Blues forward Vladimir Tarasenko.

The Kraken began an exclusive 72-hour window Sunday morning to negotiate with exposed pending free agents such as Alexander Ovechkin and Gabriel Landeskog.

This story originally appeared on: NyPost - Author:Peter Botte