Edmonton Oilers: Could Keith Yandle be a good fit with the team?

Bonus material

The Oilers released their protected list for the Seattle expansion draft on Tuesday. There aren’t any huge surprises on the list. Upfront, it was a bit of a surprise to see Zack Kassian protected considering how his season went, but apparently, his toughness isn’t duplicated anywhere else on the roster, so that’s why the team protected him. On D, they protected the three players you’d expect – Nurse, Bear, Keith. No surprise there. Skinner is the only goalie protected and exposes Stalock and Koskinen. We’ll probably hear about a Smith signing after the expansion draft.

Seattle would do us a solid if they would take Neal or Koskinen, but at this point, that doesn’t seem likely. I wrote here that I was hoping Holland would trade with Seattle to get him to take Koskinen in the draft, but that didn’t happen – not just to take Koskinen, but to take anybody. So, now we’re left to roll the dice. Hopefully, we don’t lose promising prospects like Tyler Benson or Cooper Marody, but it would still carry risk for Seattle to take them because they’re not even proven NHLers yet, never mind impact players who could help them now. I can see why the team left them unprotected and protected Kassian instead.

Fortunately for us, the Oilers don’t really leave them with a lot of attractive options. Expect William Lagesson or Kris Russell to be the front runners to be selected, with possibly Dmitry Kulikov or Slater Koekkoek signed as free agents – which would then fulfill Edmonton’s obligations vis a vis the expansion draft.

You can tune into Sportsnet on Wednesday, July 21, 6 pm local Edmonton time to watch the draft.