Expansion Drafts Making NHL GMs Leery of Playing Top Young Prospects

The Colorado Avalanche has a bit of a Faustian bargain on its hands. 

The Avs saw their top two centers, Matt Duchene and Nathan MacKinnon, go down with knee injuries during their ongoing four-game Canadian road swing. The Avs, fighting tooth and nail with the Minnesota Wild for the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference, called up 2015 first-round pick Mikko Rantanen from their AHL affiliate in San Antonio.

While Duchene is expected to return from his injury in a few days, per Sportsnet's Roger Millions, the outlook is less certain regarding the 20-year-old, former Calder Trophy winner MacKinnon. A day after an innocent-looking collision with a Calgary Flames player, MacKinnon's left knee was too swollen and sore for an MRI, which would give a precise diagnosis of the extent of the injury. As it stands, MacKinnon is due to have his MRI on Monday in Denver, according to an NHL source.

If the MRI shows MacKinnon will be lost for at least several weeks, that means Finnish rookie Rantanen would stay with the Avs for the playoff run, right? Wrong.

The reason Rantanen almost certainly won't play any more than three games with the Avs is to do with potential expansion drafts in the next two years. Rantanen played six games for Colorado before being sent to San Antonio. If he plays 10 games for Colorado this season, he will automatically gain one year of NHL contractual experience.

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Following the recent meetings between NHL GMs, ESPN's Pierre LeBrun reported first- and second-year players would be exempt from potential expansion drafts. So even though, say, a Las Vegas expansion franchise wouldn't be able to pick Rantanen, a potential expansion team for 2017-18 might. The Avs would have to protect him after his second year, but if he goes back to San Antonio before playing four games, the earliest the Avs would have to worry about protecting him would be in the 2018-19 season.

It's an issue that is taking up a considerable amount of time for NHL GMs as they game-plan a scenario in which they would likely lose one decent roster player to a potential expansion team, be it from Las Vegas, Quebec City or somewhere else.

Under current guidelines, teams can protect seven forwards, three defensemen and one goaltender. Or they can choose to protect eight skaters (forwards and defensemen) and one goalie. Some tough choices would have to be made by teams that might want to get a top rookie prospect going in their organization but might have to hold off a year because of expansion.

With a roster of good young forwards already on hand, the Avs, like many teams, don't want to think about having to expose one of them to expansion if they could avoid it. It's why Rantanen will get just a brief taste of the NHL this season, no matter how well he performs in the next three games.

Adrian Dater covers the NHL for Bleacher Report.