The Detroit Red Wings’ protection list is an indictment on prior first-round draft choices.
The NHL on Sunday released the lists of which players teams protected ahead of Wednesday’s expansion draft, and Wings general manager Steve Yzerman left 2016 first-round pick Dennis Cholowski exposed.
The protected players are forwards Dylan Larkin, Tyler Bertuzzi, Robby Fabbri, Jakub Vrana, Adam Erne, Michael Rasmussen and Givani Smith; goaltender Thomas Greiss, and defensemen Filip Hronek, newcomer Nick Leddy, and Gustav Lindstrom.
Teams could either protect seven forwards, three defensemen and a goaltender, or eight skaters of any position and a goaltender.
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The Wings also left 2015 first-round pick Evgeny Svechnikov exposed, but his place in the rebuild was made clear when he was exposed on waiver wires at the start of the 2021 season.
The list of exposed players include defensemen Troy Stecher and Danny DeKeyser, forward Vladislav Namestnikov and goaltender Jonathan Bernier.
If the Seattle Kraken, which begin play this fall, want a player who can help them right away, Stecher makes sense. He’s a relatively inexpensive ($1.7 million cap hit), right-shot defenseman who has appeared in 330 career NHL games. Last season, his first with the Wings, he logged 11 points and a minus-13 rating in 44 games.
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Cholowski, 23, has not developed into the potential the Wings saw in him in 2016, when then-GM Ken Holland and director of amateur scouting Tyler Wright described Cholowski as a high-end offensive defenseman. He is an NHL-caliber skater and passer, but his lack of assertiveness has cost him multiple chances at establishing a foothold with the Wings. In 104 NHL games dating to the 2018-19 season, Cholowski has 10 goals and 27 points and a minus-47 rating. He has 35 points and a minus-19 rating in 69 career games with the American Hockey League’s Grand Rapids Griffins.
Here is the list of players the Wings left available to the Kraken.
Forwards
Riley Barber
Kyle Criscuolo
Turner Elson
Valtteri Filppula
Sam Gagner
Luke Glendening
Darren Helm
Taro Hirose
Vladislav Namestnikov
Frans Nielsen
Bobby Ryan
Evgeny Svechnikov
Dominic Turgeon
Hayden Verbeek
Defensemen
Alex Biega
Dennis Cholowski
Danny DeKeyser
Christian Djoos
Joe Hicketts
Dylan McIlrath
Marc Staal
Troy Stecher
Goaltenders
Jonathan Bernier
Kevin Boyle
Kaden Fulcher
Calvin Pickard
Contact Helene St. James at hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames. Read more on the Detroit Red Wings and sign up for our Red Wings newsletter. Her book, The Big 50: The Detroit Red Wings is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Triumph Books. Personalized copies available via her e-mail.