Kraken Expansion Draft Big Board

"Big boards" are ideal for drafts, tournaments, and tallying up scores in a hot dog eating contest. I made one for Wednesday's expansion draft.


The name, team, and position seemed obvious. But after reading my first hockey book I realized that salary cap is going to be important too.

So I've got a section to write down all 30 original Kraken (Krakens?). 

The sections on the right relate to the position minimums and the salary cap.

Position Minimums: The Kraken must take at least 14 forwards, 9 defensemen, and 3 goalkeepers. That accounts for 26 of their 30 picks — there are no maximums, so in theory they could take 7 goalies (but how would they all fit?). 

Running Salary Cap Tally: With every new Kraken, the team will start losing salary cap flexibility. They start with $81.5 million to spend this year. The NHL has a hard cap, you can't go over. (If you run out of money at the end of the season, you just have to make do with fewer players.) 

The Kraken assuredly won't max out their cap in the expansion draft, they'll want to maintain the flexibility to sign free agents, or trade for higher salary players down the road. Of course they could take higher salary players with the intent of trading them.

Now that I'm looking at this, I wish I had room to write down any draft day trades, but there's no room!

I also wish I were in Seattle to watch the 5pm PT draft ... the live event and all the bar meetups sound really fun. 

 


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