Detroit Red Wings Expansion Draft History and Why Ken Holland Can Be Trusted
By Nick Seguin
6 years agoAs the Vegas Golden Knights prepare for the upcoming expansion draft and their inaugural season, the existing 30 teams in the NHL are scrambling to put their protection lists together. Every team is going to lose one player and they are able to protect up to 11 players if they choose the 7-3-1 format or 8 players if they choose the 7 players + 1 goalie format. Ken Holland has pretty much confirmed that Detroit will be going with the 7-3-1 format and the protection list is being finalized as we speak.
There’s a lot of discussion about who should or should not be on that protection list. For the most part, six forwards and two defensemen are a lock. But the final spots for both positions, as well as the one spot for a goaltender, are subject to much debate. Should they protect Riley Sheahan, who they received calls about at the trade deadline last year? Or Justin Abdelkader, who’s attached to an ugly contract? What about Xavier Ouellet and Nick Jensen? Both had strong rookie seasons for the Red Wings this year. Or Danny DeKeyser, who showed signs of regression in the first year of his 6-year, $30million contract?
Vegas will have a lot available to them off of this roster, but they can only choose one player. And how much can one player change the course of a team, especially the players the listed above? Holland knows this team inside and out. He knows whose absence will impact the future of this team. He’s definitely made some questionable decisions in the past when it comes to asset management, but when it comes to expansion, he’s earned the benefit of the doubt. He has, after all, lived through three of these in the past and come out completely unscathed. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a quick dive into the last three NHL expansion drafts.
1998
It was the Summer of 1998 and Detroit had just come off their second Stanley Cup in as many years. When the season started back up in October of 1998, the league would have an additional team: the Nashville Predators. That meant an expansion draft was held shortly after the Red Wings concluded their Stanley Cup celebrations.
The rules for protection back then were not far off than they are today. Teams were allowed to protect one goaltender, five defensemen, and nine forwards or two goaltenders, three defensemen, and seven forwards. Since there were two more years of expansion planned, teams were allowed to protect an extra skater in ’98 only. First and second year players were exempt from the draft, but each team had to expose at least one defenseman and two forwards with a minimum of 75 games over the course of the 1996-97 and 1997-98 seasons. Only one player could be selected from each team. Here was Ken Holland’s submitted protection list: (via historicalhockey.blogspot.ca):
Forwards: Mathieu Dandenault, Kris Draper, Sergei Federov, Vyacheslov Kozlov, Martin Lapointe, Igor Larionov, Kirk Maltby, Darren McCarty, Brendan Shanahan, and Steve Yzerman.
Defensemen: Anders Eriksson, Yan Golubovsky, Nicklas Lidstrom, Larry Murphy, and Aaron Ward.
Goalie: Chris Osgood.
Ten forwards, five defensemen, one goalie. This left players such as Vyacheslav Fetisov, Doug Brown, and Mike Knuble exposed. The Predators opted to take Brown. This was a tough blow to Detroit as he had just come off a 48 point season and was a big part of the Wings’ Stanley Cup winning teams in the two prior years. He was so crucial to the roster that, despite not making any deals before the draft to sway Nashville’s selection, Holland made a trade in the weeks following expansion to add Brown back to the roster. The Wings sent Petr Sykora, a third round pick in 1999 (which became Mike Comrie), and a conditional draft pick in 1999 (which became Alexandr Krevsun) to Nashville in return for Doug Brown.
This ended up being a good deal for Detroit as Brown put up 28 points in 1998-99 and retired as a Red Wing in the 2000-01 season. All in all, looking back now, Holland escaped this expansion draft unscathed and his Stanley Cup roster completely intact.
1999
In 1999, the NHL continued its expansion into the South with the Atlanta Thrashers. The rules of the expansion draft were unchanged from the year before with one exception: if a team lost a goalie to Nashville in 1998, they’d be exempt from losing another to Atlanta in 1999. This didn’t apply to Detroit, so, without further ado, here was Holland’s protection list (via historicalhockey.blogspot.ca):
Forwards: Kris Draper, Sergei Federov, Tomas Holmstrom, Vyacheslav Kozlov, Martin Lapointe, Kirk Maltby, Darren McCarty, Brendan Shanahan, and Steve Yzerman.
Defensemen: Chris Chelios, Mathieu Dandenault, Nicklas Lidstrom, Larry Murphy, Aaron Ward
Goalie: Chris Osgood
Holland went with the same format in ‘99 as he did in ‘98, though he very intelligently protected Mathieu Dandenault as a defenseman instead of a forward to free up one more of those nine spots. The other difference is that Holland protected Tomas Holmstrom instead of Igor Larionov, but he had a plan for that.
#96 Tomas Holmstrom (RW)
Leading up to the draft, Holland convinced the Thrashers not to take Larionov. Instead, the Thrashers selected goaltender Norm Maracle off the Red Wings roster. Maracle played a total of 6 games for the Thrashers. Following the expansion draft, the Wings traded unrestricted free agent defenseman Ulf Samuelsson to Atlanta as compensation for not picking Larionov. Samuelsson never played a game for the Thrashers as he signed with the Philadelphia Flyers and put up three points in 49 games.
So in 1999, the Red Wings lost a goalie who played a total of 6 NHL games and a UFA that they were likely not going to re-sign. Not a bad loss. At this point, Holland is two for two.
2000
In 2000, the final year of the NHL’s three year expansion plan, the Minnesota Wild and Columbus Blue Jackets would get their chance to select their rosters in an expansion draft. The rules, again, were unchanged from the previous year, except this time teams would lose two players to the draft. The Wings once again used the 9-5-1 format. Here is their protection list (via historicalhockey.blogspot.ca):
Forwards: Kris Draper, Sergei Federov, Tomas Holmstrom, Vyacheslav Kozlov, Martin Lapointe, Kirk Maltby, Darren McCarty, Brendan Shanahan, Steve Yzerman
Defensemen: Chris Chelios, Mathieu Dandenault, Steve Duchesne, Nicklas Lidstrom, Aaron Ward
Goalie: Chris Osgood
As it so happened, both players off of Detroit’s roster were taken by the Minnesota Wild and Holland didn’t need to make any deals with them for players left exposed. The Wild selected forwards Stacy Roest and Darryl Laplante. Both players were young. Roest had only played for two seasons in Detroit, recording 18 points in 108 games. He played two more seasons in Minnesota, putting up 48 points in 134 games, before coming back to Detroit and playing in 2 more NHL games. He spent the rest of his career playing in Europe. Laplante had only played in a total of 35 games for Detroit and recorded 6 assists when Minnesota selected him. He never played another game in an NHL jersey.
In conclusion, this is not Ken Holland’s first rodeo. He was at the helm for the 1998, 1999, and 2000 expansion drafts and came out completely unscathed. It would be hard to make the argument that players like Petr Sykora, Norm Maracle, Stacy Roest, or Darryl Laplante would have changed anything for the Red Wings long-term. Despite having lost these players, the Wings still won the Cup in 2002 and again in 2008.
The rules are different this year, though. Teams get to protect four less players than they did in the late-90s and they have a salary cap to worry about. Still, that’s more than enough room to protect the players who really matter to the franchise. Losing a Riley Sheahan, a Darren Helm, or a Nick Jensen will not impact the Red Wings as much as we’d like to think over the course of the next three years. So take a deep breath and, as hard as this may be when thinking about roster management, trust Ken Holland. He’s been here before and the team had much more to lose back then.
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