Big Names To Ponder

Seattle Kraken general manager Ron Francis, seen to the left talking with Kraken data science guru Alexandra Mandrycky, will have a lot of information to weed through over the next few days until he submits his final selections in the Expansion Draft to the NHL on Wednesday morning. There will certainly be input from everyone on who Francis should take and who he should avoid, but it should be pretty obvious that NHL teams, after crying and whining following the Vegas Expansion Draft, learned nothing when it came to making good players available to the new team.

I will say that I appreciate the NHL teams learning nothing because this means that Seattle will be somewhat competitive depending on how Francis chooses his team, and there are all sorts of options for star power that can be brought in if the Kraken really want to upset the balance of power in the Pacific Division. I should also say that I endorse this idea fully and completely.

While the salary cap will limit the total amount of star power that Seattle can bring in, there are enough stars to pick through to give Seattle a pretty good start in building their squad. Whether it be a star goalie like Carey Price who played junior hockey in the area or a star forward like Gabriel Landeskog who is seemingly at an impasse with the Colorado Avalanche over a new contract, the opportunity is there for Seattle to be very good next season just as Vegas was in their first season of play.

In a fun exercise, I'm not going to pick Seattle's team for them. Instead, I'm going to pick the three best options for forward, defence, and goaltender that would give them the best shot at winning everything. Salary cap be damned in this situation because I'm not picking the team; it's simply a who's who of stars available that I believe would be the best selection at each position from each team thanks to NHL GMs panicking at the idea of protecting players.

Ready for this? Let's have some fun.

F - Ryan Getzlaf
D - Haydn Fleury
G - Ryan Miller

F - Derick Brassard
D - Niklas Hjalmarsson
G - Antti Raanta

F - David Krejci
D - Mike Reilly
G - Tuukka Rask

F - Kyle Okposo
D - Jake McCabe
G - Carter Hutton

F - Josh Leivo
D - Mark Giordano
G - Louis Domingue

F - Nino Neiderreiter
D - Dougie Hamilton
G - Petr Mrazek

F - Vinnie Hinostroza
D - Calvin De Haan
G - Malcolm Subban

F - Gabriel Landeskog
D - Erik Johnson
G - Devyn Dubnyk

F - Max Domi
D - Michael Del Zotto
G - Cameron Johnson

F - Andrew Cogliano
D - Jamie Oleksiak
G - Ben Bishop

F - Taro Hirose
D - Danny DeKeyser
G - Jonathan Bernier

F - Dominik Kahun
D - Tyson Barrie
G - Mike Smith

F - Alex Wennberg
D - Radko Gudas
G - Chris Driedger

F - Martin Frk
D - Olli Maatta
G - Jonathan Quick

F - Nick Bjugstad
D - Carson Soucy
G - Kaapo Kahkonen

F - Philip Danault
D - Brett Kulak
G - Carey Price

F - Erik Haula
D - Mark Borowiecki
G - Kasimir Kaskisuo

F - Andreas Johnsson
D - Will Butcher
G - Scott Wedgewood

F - Josh Bailey
D - Sebastian Aho
G - Ken Appleby

F - Barclay Goodrow
D - Brendan Smith
G - Keith Kinkaid

F - Evgenii Dadonov
D - Josh Brown
G - Anton Forsberg

F - Jakub Voracek
D - Shayne Gostisbehere
G - Brian Elliott

F - Zach Aston-Reese
D - Marcus Petterson
G - Casey DeSmith

F - Matt Nieto
D - Greg Pateryn
G - Martin Jones

F - Vladimir Tarasenko
D - Marco Scandella
G - Ville Husso

F - Ondrej Palat
D - Cal Foote
G - Curtis McElhinney

F - Jared McCann
D - Travis Dermott
G - Frederik Andersen

F - Kole Lind
D - Alexander Edler
G - Braden Holtby

F - Carl Hagelin
D - Justin Schultz
G - Vitek Vanecek

F - Mason Appleton
D - Dylan DeMelo
G - Mikhail Berdin

There were teams whose major stars were left off because they are free agents and will never sign with Seattle. You may also notice Shea Weber and PK Subban didn't get selected from Montreal and New Jersey, respectively, because they're either injured or too often injured combined with their ages. In any case, a lot of names were left off simply due to there being no chance of that player playing in Seattle for the Kraken.

Who would you swap out from these selections if you were doing this? Sound off in the comments, and we can discuss all of the options available to Seattle on Wednesday!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!