The Seattle Kraken’s 2021 NHL Expansion Draft was completely different than when Vegas made their picks in 2017, and COVID-19 is to blame.

The Kraken selected Jordan Eberle Wednesday after the Islanders also left top-six forward Josh Bailey and prospect Kieffer Bellows unprotected. With the roster space they created on Saturday by trading away Nick Leddy and Andrew Ladd, it seemed obvious at least two of them would be kept away from Seattle. That’s true in 2017, but not this year.

In 2017, the salary cap was far less of a concern. The league was growing, and so were revenues. Teams expected the cap to keep rising, making players more valuable than cap space. Now that the COVID-19 pandemic set the league back a few years in terms of revenue, that’s no longer the case. Any good excuse to trade away a big contract is valid these days.

Teams were perfectly fine leaving a player in his prime on a heavy contract unprotected. Montreal exposed Carey Price mere weeks after he carried his team to the Stanley Cup Final. But they correctly bet that Seattle wouldn’t want to pay the 33-year-old $10.5 million each of the next five seasons. In fact, Price’s contract is the fifth most popular buyout on capfriendly.com at the time of writing. They didn’t take the bait, and his contract acted as another spot on the protected list.

The same was true for P.K. Subban, Matt Duchene and Ryan Johansen. It also applied to the two notable Isles left exposed. Bailey has three seasons left at a $5 million cap hit, and the Isles owed Eberle $5.5 million each of the next three seasons.

With all these notable players being left exposed, there were apparently no deals with the expansion team this time around. Now, teams were able to leverage hefty contracts instead of sacrificing futures. Seattle either had to swallow the pill or pick a low-risk depth player. The teams that would’ve made deals with Seattle to take a certain player already traded those players to another team at a much higher price. General managers clearly learned their lesson after panicking and trading ridiculous packages to the Golden Knights to take undervalued players.

In the end, Lou didn’t make a deal with Seattle for the expansion draft. They took Eberle.

The only move I thought he might have made was giving the Kraken Leo Komarov or Thomas Hickey and a draft pick on top of Eberle.

On the bright side, losing Eberle gives the Islanders plenty of cap space heading into free agency. Better yet, with UBS Arena and back-to-back Third-Round appearances, the team’s prestige is higher than it’s been in a long time. For example, Colorado Avalanche left wing Gabriel Landeskog – who will be an unrestricted free agent – is reportedly interested in signing with the Islanders.

Luckily, Seattle only took one player from the Islanders in the expansion draft. Lamoriello is giving himself the tools to build his ideal roster to get the Islanders back to the promised land as soon as possible under extremely difficult circumstances.

Ben Baruch

Born and raised on Long Island. Isles fan since 2009. Studying journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park.