As you’ve no doubt heard by now, the Professional Women’s Hockey League is coming to Vancouver (and Seattle) via its first round of expansion. And as you may have also heard, that expansion process began already this week with a somewhat complicated ‘exclusive signing window/expansion draft’ sequence.
In short, the PWHL’s six original teams were able to protect just three players – total. From there, the Vancouver and Seattle franchises are given an exclusive signing window to try to get as many of those unprotected players or new free agents under contract. That window runs from June 4 to June 8.
Following that, each team then selects players from the unprotected list until they’ve filled out their initial roster of 12 with signings and selections. Once one of the Original Six loses two players, they get to add a fourth to their protection list.
It’s a layered and nuanced process that is difficult to understand in NHL terms because of the vast differences between the leagues’ histories and structures. But a key takeaway, and the one that led to our thought experiment today, is the brevity of those initial protection lists.
To be clear, there are no players ineligible for selection. When the NHL does an expansion draft, it typically excludes those players with fewer than three professional seasons. Not so with the PWHL. The Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost, Montreal Victoire, New York Sirens, Ottawa Charge, and Toronto Sceptres each got to protect three players total from their list of players either signed for 2025/26 or whose signing rights were held for 2025/26, and that is up to and including their most recent 2025 round of draft selections.
Now, that leads to a fun hypothetical for any NHL franchise: which three players from the entire roster and reserve list would your team protect in an expansion draft if it could only protect three players?
And, maybe we’re biased here, but we think this hypothetical is particularly interesting right now as it pertains to the Vancouver Canucks. Primarily because the answer isn’t exactly clear.
So, let’s formally ask it, and then try to answer it:
If the Vancouver Canucks could only protect three players from their entire roster and reserve list for an upcoming expansion draft, who would they protect?
As usual, this one starts with Quinn Hughes. Sure, he’s only under contract for two more seasons. But that really doesn’t matter when we’re talking about the best player in franchise history.
Whether the Canucks intended to extend Hughes in the future or trade him for a massive return, he still entails the best value of any Canuck both now and in the future. He’d also be an automatic pickup for an expansion team, who could themselves either use him for two years or trade him for a huge haul to stock up their future cupboards.
Make no mistake, under any scenario, Hughes is the first name on the Canucks’ protection list.
But from there, it gets much more difficult to say.
The next-most-talented Canuck property is still the senior Elias Pettersson. But he certainly doesn’t hold the same unambiguous value as does Hughes – not anymore. With an $11.6 million salary and full NMC about to kick in, and coming off an extremely disappointing season, Pettersson is an at least mildly-distressed asset.
That said, he’s the only thing even resembling a 1C on this roster, and he’s just one year separated from an 89-point season, and two years separated from 102 points. Surely, any expansion team would take a swing at him as the leader of their new centre corps. By that token, Pettersson probably gets protected, too, even if it’s nowhere near as much of a slam-dunk selection as Hughes.
But Pettersson is up against a few other worthy candidates would who then have to battle it out for the third and final protection slot.
Filip Hronek is a top pairing RD already signed at a rate of $7.25 million for the next seven seasons. In terms of pure value, he’s probably next up behind Hughes and Pettersson – in fact, his value might genuinely surpass that of Pettersson right now.
But, remember, the Canucks would have to protect (or not protect) everyone on their roster and reserve list, including their youngsters.
Would the team really be comfortable letting the younger Elias Pettersson slip? What about Tom Willander, one of the top RD prospects in the world? Or Victor Mancini, slowly-but-surely becoming the centrepiece of the JT Miller return? Sorry, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, you’re a great forward prospect, but you probably don’t even come into consideration here ahead of the three young D.
Other names could enter the discussion, like perhaps Jake DeBrusk or Filip Chytil or Marcus Pettersson, but not for very long, we’d imagine. It’s essentially a choice of blend drawn from the Canucks’ top three roster players (Hughes, Pettersson I, and Hronek) and/or their top three young defenders (Pettersson II, Willander, and Mancini).
As to the exact split…that’s just tough.
We can envision a world in which the Canucks go Hughes, Pettersson, and Hronek just to maintain the best possible chance of competing through Hughes’ next two years. We can also see a path where the Canucks protect just Hughes, and back him up with two of Pettersson Jr., Willander, and Mancini (and probably the latter two) just to secure the future of the blueline.
As for who the Canucks would add to their protection list as a fourth item following the selection of two of their players? That’s easy – it’s just whoever is left over from this group of six.
Suffice it to say, then, that a PWHL-style expansion draft would be difficult for the Canucks to navigate. The same is true in general for most NHL franchises, but seems especially so for Vancouver.
If we’re being honest, the Canucks have skated by pretty easily through the Vegas and Seattle expansion drafts, losing just Luca Sbisa and Kole Lind. They wouldn’t be nearly as fortunate were they to go through the same process as the PWHL’s Original Six is going through now.
Thankfully, however, this was just a thought experiment.
