Avs expected to leave Landeskog unprotected in expansion draft

In a move that comes following reports that the Avalanche and Gabriel Landeskog’s camp are far apart in contract negotiations, it is now expected that Landeskog, the Avs captain, will be left unprotected in the expansion draft.

With the trading this week of Ryan Graves, it’s clear the three defensemen the Avs will protect in the expansion draft to be Cale Makar, Samuel Girard, and Devon Toews. In net, the protected player will be Philipp Grubauer.

Up front, the belief is Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Andre Burakovsky, Nazem Kadri, Tyson Jost, and Valeri Nichushkin will be protected. With Landeskog being exposed, that leaves one open protection spot, and the identity of that player isn’t quite known yet.

In order to protect a Joonas Donskoi or J.T. Compher, the Avs will have had to have made a move to to sign another eligible forward in the expansion draft, otherwise their protection list would be ineligible. Another potential option is them protecting Logan O’Connor and still exposing both Compher and Donskoi.

DNVR will update the full protection list tomorrow, but the big bombshell is Gabriel Landeskog being exposed. That’s not the only Landeskog news.

In news surely related to Landeskog being left unprotected, DNVR has also confirmed the report from Andy Strickland that Landeskog is asking for $9-10M per year. At this point, the Avs don’t appear ready to go near that number.

Stay tuned to DNVR for more Avalanche news, as this is already shaping up to be a crazy few weeks for the home team.