Winnipeg Jets NHL Expansion Draft Plans - Part 4: The Forwards

The NHL expansion draft is rapidly approaching! This will be the means by which the Vegas Golden Knights acquire players for their inaugural NHL season in 2017-18. In preparation, I will be posting a series of posts to explore the rules of the draft, and how the Winnipeg Jets might approach it. The series will include:

1. Exploring the rules of the NHL expansion draft and how they apply to the Winnipeg Jets
2. 7/3/1 or 8/1 for the Winnipeg Jets?
3. The Defense: would Toby Enstrom waive his No-move clause?
4. The Forwards: will the Jets try to cash in on Mathieu Perreault’s peak value by trading him prior to the expansion draft?
5. Veteran goaltender: exploring the impact of acquiring one before the expansion draft
6. My projected Winnipeg Jets expansion draft protected list.

In this post, I’ll take a closer look at the Forward group, including considering whether it might be time to cash in on a very strong second half of the 2016-17 season by moving Mathieu Perreault’s contract off the books through a trade. Let’s start by reviewing the Jets forwards who are eligible for the expansion draft:

Winnipeg Jets Players Eligible for the Expansion Draft

Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way: the Jets will protect Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler and Bryan Little, and they will not protect any of the forwards in the second row of the table above. That leaves a group of Mathieu Perreault, Adam Lowry, Joel Armia, Andrew Copp and Marko Dano; the Jets can protect either one or four of these players, depending on whether they deploy an 8/1 or 7/3/1 protected list, respectively. Furthermore, as I described in my first post in this series, one of Perreault, Lowry and Armia must be exposed.

Looking at this group of five players, we can clearly see that one of these things is not like the others. We have four young, up and coming players on favorable contracts whose best days are likely ahead of them, but who also come with uncertainty as to their eventual ceiling (Lowry, Armia, Copp and Dano). Then we have Perreault, a player who in my estimation likely just completed the most productive half season run of his NHL career, and a player who comes with a substantially higher salary and cap hit for the next four years (cap hit of $4.125 mil; all salary numbers per nhlnumbers.com). In contrast, Copp and Dano are restricted free agents (RFAs) this summer, while Lowry and Armia each have one season left at $1.125 and $0.925 mil, respectively, before becoming RFAs. None of these four players will receive close to $4 mil on their next contract, barring an explosive season in 2017/18.

In my view, salary must be an integral part of the decision making process in developing the Jets’ expansion draft protected list. In the 2018/19 season, only 6 current Jets regulars (none of them goalies) will still be working under their current contracts: Scheifele, Wheeler, Perreault, Patrik Laine, Dustin Byfuglien, and Tyler Myers. These six players make up nearly $30 mil towards the Jets 2018/19 salary cap, not including bonuses (e.g. Patrik Laine achieved $2.65 mil in bonuses last season, to be applied against the 2017/18 salary cap). In 2018/19, the following key players will all be due for new contracts: Little, Nikolaj Ehlers, Lowry, Armia, Jacob Trouba, Josh Morrissey and Toby Enstrom. On top of those, Patrik Laine and Kyle Connor will both be due new contracts in 2019/20.

The point of boring you with salary numbers is to make the case that, even though a cap hit of $4.125 mil is actually quite reasonable for Mathieu Perreault within the context of the NHL as a whole, I believe that his cap hit is untenable for the Jets beyond the 2017/18 season. As a result, among the group of Perreault, Lowry and Armia (remember, the Jets must expose at least one of these three), I would rank Perreault last. Intriguingly, he likely carries the highest potential trade value based on production and a reasonable contract. The obvious question then, is should the Jets trade Perreault prior to the expansion draft in an effort to clear another spot on their protected list and acquire an asset?

Let’s consider this under each protected list scenario. If the Jets find a way to deploy the 7/3/1 protected list composition, then trading Perreault would allow them to protect both Copp and Dano in addition to one of Lowry and Armia. If they deploy the 8/1 protected list composition, then the Jets could protect one of Lowry and Armia, while also leaving both Copp and Dano exposed.
On the other hand, if the Jets decide that their priority is to retain both Lowry and Armia, then the best way to do this is to keep Perreault and expose him in the expansion draft. They would be able to protect both Lowry and Armia in a 7/3/1 protected list, and Perreault would serve as bait to protect whomever the Jets exposed between Lowry and Armia in a 8/1 protected list.

So to answer the question, should the Jets trade Perreault prior to the expansion draft? Unfortunately, I have to steal a page from the ever-forthcoming Kevin Cheveldayoff, and say “It depends”. The Jets could potentially strike an advantageous deal. However, any deal must be weighed against its ramifications in the context of the expansion draft. So, if the Jets trade Perreault for a prospect and a pick, but as a result of the trade the lose a player like Lowry or Armia, then that must be viewed as part of the trade.