The summer of 2021 is so far in the distance as to not yet be visible. Also it’s looming large in the foreground in terms of the NHL salary cap and the life-cycle of a hockey club.

The Canadiens are already busy strategizing for the next expansion draft, and it’s entirely likely the team will lose a player that, on the whole, they’d rather hang on to. You can’t protect everyone.

Who’s likely to be exposed and plucked off the roster? We have some ideas.

This is, of course, a speculative exercise. So let’s start with a disclaimer: assumptions are required when it comes to projecting the Canadiens roster in late June of 2021, when the expansion Seattle Something or Others stock up.

Montreal has a bunch of players who stand to become free agents a few days after the expansion draft; one or more of them will assuredly sign new contracts either the previous summer — under the CBA, veterans on expiring contracts can sign extensions after July 1 of the year before their deal is up — whereas others will not.

Some will doubtless ask for no-move clauses, which will have implications on the expansion draft, and is already something Marc Bergevin is game planning for, as The Athletic’s Marc Antoine Godin reported in our initial projection of the Canadiens’ protected list.

We are also going to assume that none of the current roster players who stand to be protected will be dealt between now and 2021 (breathe easy, young Mr. Drouin).

Axiomatically, teams do not protect impending UFAs; if you can’t sign a player before the expansion draft, there’s no point protecting him at the expense of somebody else and risking that he walks on July 1. It’s just common sense.

Beyond that, the rules for Seattle will be the same as for Las Vegas in 2017. Every team will be allowed to protect either seven forwards, three defencemen and a goalie, or eight skaters of any flavour plus a goaltender. All players with two years’ service or less in pro hockey are automatically exempt. Any player with a no-movement clause must be protected unless they specifically choose to lift it.

There are also other factors to consider, per the NHL:

All clear on the rules of the game? Good, as it happens so are the Canadiens.

Never let it be said the Montreal front office doesn’t know exactly what parameters they’re working under. Ryan Poehling will technically be entering his third pro season in 2021, having burned the first year of his contract by playing the final game of the 2018-19 season. In the unlikely event anyone has forgotten, it was totally worth it.

But because Poehling played fewer than 11 games, the 2018-19 season doesn’t count for the purposes of arbitration or waiver eligibility. He’ll still be a rookie in the fall, and that means he won’t have to be protected in the expansion draft.

Bearing all that in mind, here are the players we deem most likely to be protected at this point:

(Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)

Forwards:

Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Brendan Gallagher, Jonathan Drouin, Max Domi, Phillip Danault, Artturi Lehkonen, Paul Byron.

(Andre Ringuette/NHLI via Getty Images)

Defencemen:

Shea Weber, Victor Mete, Cale Fleury.

(Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)

Goalie:

Carey Price (NMC).

The key assumptions are that Gallagher and Danault will sign extensions (whereas Tomas Tatar and Jeff Petry will not), and a 32-year-old Byron will continue to be viewed as a crucial part of the leadership group (worth noting: he was protected last time around). Also, and this is perhaps the most tendentious forecast, the right-shooting Fleury, at 22, will be deemed a more valuable asset than a 24-year-old Noah Juulsen or a 27-year-old Brett Kulak.

All in all, the Canadiens are in decent shape and barring a bunch of roster upheaval between now and 2021 should have no difficulty protecting their key assets.

With all that out of the way, who are the players most likely to pique Seattle’s fancy? How about:

Brett Kulak

The Canadiens just signed Kulak to a three-year deal that pays him an extremely reasonable $1.8 million per season; it’s possible that if he establishes himself as a second-pairing defenceman at that price point that Montreal will decide to keep him and expose another youngster.

But it’s probably not worth betting on that. Though my colleague Marc Dumont has done a thorough job explaining just how good Kulak was last year, it’s probable if not certain the Canadiens will have other left-handed options to fit into the lineup by the summer of 2021. At that point he’ll be just 27, which might appeal to an expansion team; the typical expansion draft fare is either older veterans or unproven youngsters, mid-career players tend not to be exposed as often.

The Albertan’s game improved last year and he’ll get a chance to expand his role next season and perhaps the one after that. In any event, he will meet the 40/70 threshold for games played. But the bet here is that Kulak will be deemed, if not expendable, not as important a player to protect as Fleury, who will be five years younger and cost-controlled for longer.

It’s also entirely possible the Canadiens will acquire another left-handed defenceman who needs to be protected between now and then.

Ben Chiarot

Yes, he just joined the team as a free agent and is expected to battle it out with Kulak and Mete for a top-four role. True, the Canadiens gave him a limited no-trade clause that affords him a “no” list of 10 teams Montreal cannot deal him to. But that’s not especially relevant in the expansion draft process, where only players with no-movement clauses can veto a claim from Seattle. All it really does is increase the likelihood he’ll be in Montreal when Seattle makes its selections.

The fact Chiarot is signed through 2021-22 at $3.5 million per year might make him an attractive depth piece. Not that the Canadiens don’t hope and expect him to become a fixture on the blue line, but Chiarot will be 30 in the spring of 2021, and it’s a reasonable bet he’ll have been passed on the depth chart by Alexander Romanov (who wouldn’t have to be protected as a second-year pro) or possibly even another youngster (maybe 2019 third-rounder Mattias Norlinder, an overager who will embark on his age 22 season that fall?).

It’s a cliché to say a team can never have enough defencemen, but it also happens to be the prime directive for a lot of NHL teams. Rugged players like Chiarot have currency in the league, it’s possible he’d be the guy Seattle wants.

Noah Juulsen

This is surely the hardest decision facing Marc Bergevin. Juulsen is a former first-round pick who has shown flashes of top-four potential in the NHL. He’s a righty, which teams are always looking for, and he’s a physical specimen who doesn’t mind throwing his weight around.

Unfortunately, he’s also been hurt a lot. Juulsen’s first pro season was limited to 54 games because of a broken foot. Last year, he seemed en route to establishing himself as an NHL regular before a facial fracture and eye injury cut his season short at 24 games.

He’s expected to make a full recovery, but if we’re projecting into the future, the fact he’s lost development time in a system that includes the likes of Fleury and Josh Brook (both of whom also play the right) suggests he could be sacrificed in favour of younger, cheaper players. Juulsen is the kind of player expansion teams love to take a flier on.

Joel Armia

Armia is an RFA this season, and if Bergevin follows the contract pattern he established with Kulak, will end up with a multi-year contract. He will still only be 28 in 2021. What if he’s a 20-25 goal guy by then?

The Finn is also a substantial citizen at 6-foot-4, 210 pounds, which should keep him employed for a good, long time. Canadiens watchers will likely remember him more for the glorious scoring chances he missed last season rather than the fact he was there to blow them in the first place. Armia scored a career-high 13 goals in 57 games last year, which works out to 19-ish over a full season.

That said, the Canadiens should have other wing prospects pushing for full-time roles by then, if not sooner. If Nick Suzuki lives up to expectations, Cole Caufield gains some man-strength and the Canadiens hit on another kid, like Joel Teasdale, Jesse Ylonen, Jacob Olofsson, Allan McShane or Cole Fonstad, it’s not at all hard to imagine Armia will be deemed as surplus to requirements.

The pending UFAs

(Dave Reginek/NHLI via Getty Images)

Tomas Tatar

Look, Tomas Tatar is a wonderful player, and certainly a more important cog in Montreal’s two-way play than he gets credit for. Plus, his is a lovely back story. The problem for him is that in 2021 he’ll be heading into his age 31 season, and the Canadiens will almost certainly need to make room for big-money deals involving Kotkaniemi and Poehling, both of whom will be restricted free agents that summer. Assuming Tatar’s metronomic productivity extends through the next two seasons, the going rate for his services will almost certainly be higher than the $5.3 million he’s currently on.

Last time around, the Canadiens left Alex Radulov off their protected list, and while he didn’t appeal to Vegas, it’s at least a notional possibility that Seattle decides to grab the rights to Tatar and attempt to sign him, or perhaps flip him immediately for an asset to a team that would like a shot at presenting him with a contract offer. Vegas went out of its way to hoard draft picks and prospects in the aftermath of the 2017 draft, it would be surprising if Seattle didn’t look to do the same.

Jeff Petry

Right-hand shooting defenceman aren’t exactly proliferating in nature, and while Jeff Petry is another player the Canadiens would surely like to keep he’ll be entering his age 33 season. With Weber on the wrong side of 35 (he’ll actually be 36 heading into 2021-22, but he’s the captain and man mountain gets protected), the Canadiens will surely be trying to skew younger on the blue line.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Petry signs a short-term extension in Montreal before 2021, but even if that’s the case it’s hard to imagine the Canadiens would protect him instead of a younger player.

Again, it’s not clear why Seattle would let Montreal off the hook by picking a soon-to-be UFA, but Petry is a highly useful player and is likely to still be one two years from now. And the same reasoning can be applied as the Tatar case: he should be popular on the free agent market and his rights might garner a draft pick in return..

The dark horses

Part of the peril involved in conducting this exercise is it risks underestimating younger players who may well become pillars in the near future.

For instance, it’s not outside the realm of possibility 2021 UFA Jordan Weal will have earned a new contract, or that Xavier Ouellet or Mike Reilly, whose contract will be up in 2021, will have become blue line fixtures.

And what happens if the Canadiens re-sign Charles Hudon and he manages to develop a two-way game that makes him a top-9 NHL winger?

Then there’s Jake Evans, who just wrapped up his first pro season and has the look of a guy who could play in the big league. He’ll be 25 in 2021, and in need of a new contract as an RFA. If he’s carved out a regular NHL role by then, the calculations get more difficult.

We’re talking about graduate-level math problems as it is. The Canadiens will need their thinking caps.

(Top photo of Joel Armia: Mike Stobe/NHLI via Getty Images)