As expected, the Minnesota wild protected restricted free agent Kevin Fiala. While he has yet to sign a new contract with the Wild, they still decided to protect the 20-goal scorer from being picked by the Seattle Kraken.
Roman Josi (Nashville Predators), Nico Hischier (New Jersey Devils), Jonas Siegenthaler (New Jersey Devils), and Timo Meier (San Jose Sharks) have also been protected by their respective teams and will thus not be available to the Seattle Kraken at the Expansion Draft.
Nino Niederreiter (one year left on his contract with the Carolina Hurricanes), Dean Kukan (one year left on his contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets), Calvin Thürkauf (technically a restricted free agent, but has signed with HC Lugano), Sven Bärtschi (unrestricted free agent, Vancouver Canucks), Yannick Weber (technically an unrestricted free agent, but has signed with the ZSC Lions), and Denis Malgin (restricted free agent, Toronto Maple Leafs), on the other hand, can be selected by the Kraken, as they were left unprotected by their teams.
Pius Suter and Philipp Kurashev are also not on the protection list of the Chicago Blackhawks, albeit for a different reason: all first- and second-year professionals will be exempt from selection. The Hawks did thus not need to protect them, as they cannot be chosen by the Kraken.
The Seattle Kraken, the newest franchise of the NHL, will be able to select one player from each NHL team (excluding the Vegas Golden Knights), thus a total of 30 players, on July 21. 20 of those players must be under contract for the 2021-22 season. They are also allowed to talk to pending free agents who were not protected by their respective teams from July 18 to 21. If they sign one of those RFAs or UFAs, this will count as their pick from the team the player last belonged to.
