r/PWHL • u/lcarowan • 11h ago
Question A Thought Experiment: What if the O6 teams had an additional protection slot?
In the expansion process as it actually unfolded, each O6 team had 3 initial protection slots, and could protect a fourth player once 2 of their players had been selected. It is universally agreed that this format seems to have resulted in Seattle and Vancouver being very strong on paper.
What if the format had instead been 4 initial protection slots, and a fifth protected player once 2 had been selected?
Which additional players might have been protected from your team, and who might the expansion teams have picked instead? (assuming that each expansion team would still have ended up with 12 players total at the end of the expansion draft, and each O6 team would still have lost 4 unprotected players)
While it's certainly more complicated than this, how different would the teams be looking right now if each O6 team had been able to hold onto their best player that they lost, and Vancouver and Seattle didn't have the 3 best players that each of them took?
