Along with the rest of the NHL, the Tampa Bay Lightning has announced the team’s protection list for the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft. The following players have been protected:
After the trade of Jonathan Drouin, there wasn’t much debate about which forwards would be protected. There are no surprises there. The same goes for goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. The defense, though, had a big question mark. Hedman and Stralman were easy to pick. That left the third spot to be debated by fans and followers of the team between Slater Koekkoek and Jake Dotchin.