NHL Expansion Draft Round-up: Silver Seven’s mock offers up something different

There’s benefits to being apart of a blogging network such as SB Nation. Mainly, we get to see others with whom we are affiliated offer up some opinions that we can use for our own purposes. Ross A from Silver Sevens did a mock expansion draft back on March 17th. He has Capitals forward Tom Wilson and Dallas Stars winger Antoine Roussel going to Vegas.

Yeah, because we totally want those guys in the Western Conference and on the some team...

Former Minnesota Golden Gopher Nick Bjugstad was scooped by Vegas in his simulation. I have a hard time believing Florida leaves him exposed, but that $4.1 million AAV cap hit for the next four seasons on a 24 year old not only helps the new franchise get to the salary cap floor, but also has a young stud forward cost controlled for what should be his most productive seasons.

But we don’t care what the Panthers lose, or what Washington leaves exposed. No, we here worry about who the Wild will lose in expansion. Ross has an answer.

He has Wild defenseman Matt Dumba getting selected by the Golden Knights. Dumba, a 22 (almost 23) year old defenseman whose offensive production has increased each season, with twice reaching the 10 goal plateau, certainly would garner interest from an expansion franchise.

Ross explains his reasoning:

Admittedly, this is a pretty hard one to predict. On the one hand, the Wild have a solid 22-year-old RFA defenceman in Matt Dumba. On the other hand, they’ve reportedly tried to trade him in the past because they’re worried about his contract capping them out. I predict they’ll stay with the certainty of Jared Spurgeon’s deal, but that means they lose a great young d-man for nothing. If they kept four d-men, they’d lose Niederreiter or Staal or Granlund for free. If any team feels compelled to make an expansion draft-based trade, it’ll be these guys.

With rumors of Dumba being on the block in the past, it is easy to see why someone could think the Wild might leave him available for plucking. I am of the thinking that the Wild should look to achieve a salary dump of some sort to get cap relief, so while many fans are fed up with Dumba’s defense, his low dollar contract doesn’t do much to relieve the cap stresses on the team.

He also admitted that his goal was to create a young team to have the young franchise develop into a competitive team.

My hardest task was getting 20 players under contract for 2017-18. My goal of building a young team meant I wanted to take a lot of RFAs, but I wasn’t allowed to. Smart GMs will hold off on re-signing RFAs until after the expansion draft to make it harder for Vegas to take some of their decent young players.

Interesting enough, through his process he had to guess at which players the Wild would leave exposed. Jason Zucker was left exposed, but he feels that Dumba is that much of an asset over the “hometown boy” story.

So what do you think, Wilderness?