Finally, the day is here! NHL teams have until 5:00pm today to submit their protection lists for the Expansion Draft. The first deadline is 3:00 pm (which already passed when this article was published.) At that time, roster freezes go into effect and teams can only deal with Vegas until the Golden Knights’ selections are revealed on the 21st at the NHL Awards Show.
With that in mind, teams will scramble up until the last second to make sure Vegas has nothing of value to take for their roster. We’ve already seen some moves made, with buy-outs happening earlier in the week and the Jonathan Drouin trade from Tampa Bay to Montreal.