The Nashville Predators have protected five defencemen

One of the more interesting expansions draft lists came from the Nashville Predators, a team looking to get out of some troubled contracts.

The club elected to protect five defencemen in the draft: Alexandre Carrier, Mattias Ekholm, Dante Fabbro, Roman Josi and newly acquired Phillippe Myers.

Going this route allowed the Predators to expose forwards Matt Duchene and Ryan Johansen — both of whom who have struggled to live up to massive contracts.

Nashville signed Duchene, 30, in free agency in 2019 to a seven-year deal paying him an AAV of $8-million but has scored just 55 points in 100 games. While that’s decent production by any stretch of the term, it’s not what the Predators were hoping for when they signed him to the deal that has five years left on it.

Johansen, meanwhile, was acquired in the Seth Jones deal six years ago. He’s scored 271 points in 399 games over the length of the deal and the 28-year-old has four years left on a deal paying him $8-million per year.

Here’s the Predators full protected list:

Filip Forsberg (F)

Tanner Jeannot (F)

Luke Kunin (F)

Alexandre Carrier (D)

Mattias Ekholm (D)

Dante Fabbro (D)

Roman Josi (D)

Philippe Myers (D)

Juuse Saros (G)

Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@oilersnation.com.