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Alex Kovalev: Will he be protected in the SB Nation NHL mock expansion draft, or won't he? Read on to find out.

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If you've been following the SB Nation NHL mock expansion draft, by now you probably know a few things: We're pretending the league is expanding to 32 teams, so the fake Winnipeg Jets (managed by Gabe Desjardins from Behind the Net) and the fake Quebec Nordiques (managed by the Globe and Mail's James Mirtle) will be trying to get the best out of what the rest of the league leave behind.

So far, the fake general managers of the Ottawa Senators (the writers here at Silver Seven) have release the protected lists for goalies and for defencemen. Today, we move on to the forwards.

There are a few ground rules to go over. First off, any player who's appeared in 49 or fewer NHL games is automatically exempt; for this reason, there was no need for us to protect Zack Smith or Bobby Butler. Secondly, we had to make sure to leave "at least two forwards who appeared in 40 games last season OR 70 games in the last two seasons combined." This wasn't a problem for us.

Alright, let's get things started with easiest and then second-easiest decisions:

Jason Spezza

#19 / Center / Ottawa Senators

Height: 6-3

Weight: 215

Born: Jun 13, 1983

Team can't give up Spezza for nothing. He's going to be protected. He's paid a hefty salary, but he earns it (at least as much as anyone in the NHL "earns" multiple millions of dollars). There are people out there who might want to see him traded, but you're not going to find any of those people fake-managing this Senators team.

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Gene J. Puskar - AP

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Yesterday, we started releasing the list of protected players for the Ottawa Senators, part of the process for SBN hockey's mock expansion draft. We made the initial decision of protecting only one goaltender in order to protect five defenders and nine forwards, and also announced that the one goaltender we're protecting is Brian Elliott.

Today, we're onto the defenders. We've got to choose five, but our choices will be guided not only by those players who will be most useful. We also need to leave some decent players available: Each team must leave unprotected at least one defenseman who appeared in 40 games last season OR 70 games in the last two seasons combined. On the plus side, we don't have to worry about any players who have played less than 50 games in the NHL, so obviously someone like Jared Cowen is exempt from the draft.

So let's get moving: Our protected defencemen include:

1. Sergei Gonchar: We're not going to leave the new guy unprotected. Although some fans are already writing this signing off as too much, too long, for a player who's too old, Gonchar was signed for a reason: He's one of the league's best blue line producers, and he should awaken the powerplay. We'll give him a chance to try before closing the book on him.

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Last week, we mentioned SB Nation's NHL mock expansion draft: Basically, we polled readers to choose two cities for a fictional expansion of the National Hockey League. The winners were Winnipeg and Quebec City, bringing the two most recent Canadian-based teams back into the fold. The next step in the excercise? Every team blog will be coming up with their protected lists, based on current rosters.

The first choice in the process is how we, the fictional general managers of the Ottawa Senators in the alternate universe, want to build our protected list. As was the case in the NHL's last expansion ten years ago, teams have two choices: We were given the choice to protect either one goalie, five defencemen, and nine forwards OR two goalies, three defencemen, and seven forwards.

For us, the choice was easy: The first format, protecting one goaltender, five defencemen, and nine forwards.

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TSN is reporting that Dr. Donald Chow, the Ottawa Senators' head physician, is in critical condition after a motorcycle accident. Dr. Chow was riding his motorcycle when it slammed into the passenger side door of another car, and he was thrown from his bike and rushed to hospital.

He is currently listed as being in critical condition with severe head and chest injuries, while the driver of the vehicle suffered minor injuries.

Update: The Ottawa Sun is reporting that Dr. Chow is currently in a coma.

Our thoughts are with Dr. Chow, his family and his friends at this time.

More photos » Michael Dwyer - AP

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Here's a collection of stories for you on this fine Friday:

• Prospect Andre Petersson is lighting up the European Trophy tournament right now, having put up 4 goals and 4 assists in his first 6 games, which had him 3rd in points. At the time of writing, he had just added another goal in HV71's game against Tappara, bumping him up to 5 goals in 7 games. (European Trophy)
• Daniel Alfredsson spoke at the World Hockey Summit, giving his take on the differences between the European and North American game, and why he prefers the NHL's ice surface. (NHL.com)
  
• Our friends at Battle of Ontario are reporting that there will be two Senators vs. Leafs preseason games, both in Toronto, on September 21st and 22nd. (Battle of Ontario)
• Ken Warren wonders just how long 38-year-old Daniel Alfredsson can continue to lead the Senators' offense. (Gazette)
• CSN Washington picks Ottawa to finish 8th in the East. Of course, it's hard to take the article seriously when it calls Bobby Butler and Patrick Wiercioch as "two of the most sought-after college free agents at the end of the NCAA season." Right. (CSN Washington)
• Our friend James Gordon offers his own prognostication: the Senators will finish fourth in the East. (Citizen)
• Rumour has it Peter Regin is switching jersey numbers to #13 this season, so if you were planning on getting a Regin jersey, you might want to hold off on putting #43 on the back at this moment. (Sens Chirp)
  

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Over the course of the last couple of days, we've printed the first two parts of a substantive interview with Michael McKinley, author of Hockey: A People's History. So far it's run the spectrum, discussing the writing process and a lot about the history of the game, and of professional hockey in Ottawa. For the third and final part of the series, we get into more contemporary issues facing the game, and the NHL.

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Silver Seven: The game of hockey is changing, especially on an international level. Do you think the KHL poses a risk to the NHL, or to professional hockey in North America?

Michael McKinley: I think competition is good. I think the WHA certainly tried it, and changed the way the NHL did business. It did it because it was so proximate, you know? They were playing in the same arenas, many of those teams in the WHA and NHL. So you could change corporate colours quite easily. I think the cultural leap that the KHL represents is one that is easily made by Eastern European players, because they're from there so they can go back and do it, but I'm not sure that it would lure the best North American players over there, to earn an extra million bucks to play in an environment totally foreign to their professional sensibilities.

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Looks like a decent season for the Ottawa Senators and the NHL's national broadcasters, with 43 of the Sens' 82 games this season televised nationally.

Now, I say 'nationally', but I'm not really sure that's the case. For instance, 23 games will be televised on French-language networks: RDS leading the way with 20, while their affiliate network RIS has three. In English, there will be 18 games on CBC, ten on TSN, and two on TSN2. Naturally, no Sens games will be telecast on Versus or NBC, because Americans have no desire to watch the Senators at all (sorry, Mark). (Also, these televised games add up to more than 43 because some games are broadcast on both English and French-langauge networks.)

Hopefully Sportsnet, Rogers, or some other local networks pick up the remaining 39 games in the season schedule.

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Yesterday, the first part of an interview with Michael McKinley, author of Hockey: A People's History, was posted on the website. In it, we talked about the writing process, the history of the game, and the stories that play such a key role in making it so enjoyable to follow. In this second series, McKinley talks a bit more about the Ottawa Senators, the history of hockey in Ottawa, and get into the story of women's hockey, and why it's taken so long for the women's game--despite its storied legacy--to get recognized by the Hockey Hall of Fame.

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Silver Seven: In the early days of professional hockey, Ottawa had a pretty significant role in the development of the game. But it took almost 60 years after the original Senators left Ottawa for the NHL to expand to the city once again. Why do you think it took so long for Ottawa to re-gain an NHL franchise?

Michael McKinley: That's a really good question. I mean, it's the national capital, and as you rightly point out, it's critical in the development of the game; I mean, the Stanley Cup originates there. In so much of the early days of hockey, Ottawa was the star. And with the Silver Seven, it was littered with stars. I think that when they lost the team during the 1930s, we were in the middle of the Depression. Then the NHL loses teams during the Second World War, like the New York Americans, as well. And then we get the so-called ‘Original Six', and we've got Conn Smythe in Toronto, the Montreal Canadiens, Chicago, Boston, the Rangers, and Detroit. So [James] Norris owns Detroit, and Chicago, and has an interest in the Rangers; the one guy. Boston's owned by a powerful owner, and Smythe's got Toronto, and Montreal has had a pot pourri of powerful guys. And they're doing okay.

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A few months ago, I was contacted with an offer to receive a copy of Hockey: A People's History for review on my website, and an opportunity to speak with the book's author, Michael McKinley, about the book and the process of writing it. Never one to decline such an opportunity, I accepted, and a few days later received the book in the mail---initially intimidatingly huge at 370-plus oversized pages, but once I opened it, a genuine pleasure to read. The book charts the sport's history from its first days (as far back as 600 BC) to the modern day, telling select stories alongside full-colour illustrations and made for hours of very interesting reading.

Needless to say, the massive tome brought plenty of questions to mind, and I wanted to put them all to Mr. McKinley when we were to talk over the phone a few days ago. But I restrained myself to some degree, trying not to keep the author busy for too long. As it was, we spent an hour talking about the book, the game, the sport, and the business. This is the first part of that interview.

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Silver Seven: What inspired you to write Hockey: A People's History? You did, originally, start with another book, right?

Michael McKinley: I did, I wrote a book called Putting a Roof on Winter. My aim with Putting a Roof on Winter was to tell the story of hockey in Canada; one that was, you know, dramatic and nail-biting and triumphant, and then it changes everything, and that's a different story for later.

And then later came along, with CBC's Hockey: A People's History. The CBC were going to do one hour on the Richard Riots, in 1965. They realized they had too much material to fit in one hour, and felt that it deserved a longer segment. So they picked up Putting a Roof on Winter, read it, and thought, "Ah-ha! We'll ask this guy to write the program material." So that's how I got involved in the project.

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Since the summer news cycle has slowed down to a crawl and training camps are still a few weeks away, the hockey blogs of SB Nation have teamed up to provide some much-needed filler. This year Silver Seven has gotten together with the Mile High Hockey, the Colorado Avalanche blog. I sent a series of questions to blogger David Driscoll-Carignan about the upcoming Avalanche season, and later in the week we'll have our answers to some of his questions about our Ottawa Senators. But first, here's what David had to say:

Possibly the biggest weakness for the Avalanche last season was the number of shots they allowed per game. Defencemen Brett Clark and Ruslan Salei left via free agency, but nobody was signed to replace them. How big of an issue will the defence be?

The Avs gave up a ton of shots last year, but I do think the defensemen did a pretty good job keeping a lot of those shots out towards the perimeter which Craig Anderson could handle with relative ease. While I would have liked to see GM Greg Sherman add a veteran like Willie Mitchell or even former Senator Andy Sutton, the Avalanche do have a lot of young defensemen who need opportunities to play. Personally, I'm not all that worried about the defense.

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