What is the 50-player protected list?

Published 11:14 am Friday, May 2, 2008

Reader Andy Head asked me a question about Everett’s 50-player protected list, so I figured I’d share my answer with everyone, as well as do some explaining about the protected list as a whole.

First off, let me explain exactly what it is. The 50-player protected list is the list of player rights owned by each team in the WHL. That includes players on the roster and prospects not on the roster, and the total is limited to 50 (with exceptions). Teams are free to add and drop players from their lists at will, though there is a freeze period somewhere between the trade deadline and the bantam draft (I think).

The exceptions to the 50-player limit I’m aware of are players in the pros, prospects in college and players on the 60-day injured list. Teams can keep these player on their lists without it counting against the 50. As an example, I suspect both Peter Mueller (pro) and Kyle Okposo (college) were on Everett’s list this season, and they wouldn’t have counted against the 50. And David Reekie didn’t count against the list when he was on the 60-day injured list. I don’t know how many extra players a team can keep like this.

Now, I use the term “suspect” when talking about Mueller and Okposo for a reason. That’s because most WHL teams guard their protected lists like Fort Knox. Everett is one of them. Just why teams are so fanatical about keeping their lists a secret is not really known (at least by me), and as a result there’s always a handful of players on the protected list most of us (including me) are unaware of.

However, the bulk of the list is pretty easy to figure out. If you take the players on the current roster and add in the 15- and 16-year-old draft picks who aren’t on the roster, that will take you to around 45. Not all those draft picks are going to be retained, so let’s say that teams will usually have about 10 players on their lists that can’t be determined by a quick glance. Some of those (Everett examples Brett Chartier, Cameron Abney, Brenden Stephen, etc.) are undrafted prospects who have been publicly acknowledged. The rest of those spots are often in flux between fringe prospects, late bloomers and talented players supposedly headed to the NCAA.

Now, Andy asked his question because he did his calculations and came up with 58 players for the list. That includes the recent bantam draft additions, and yes teams have to clear space for their draft picks. I can’t say with any certainty who from Andy’s list isn’t on Everett’s list (though there’s a few invitees to last year’s training camp that I’m pretty sure were never on the list to begin with). However, this is the time of year when there’s another exception. As soon as the season ends the potential overagers for next season no longer count against the 50. I think (emphasis on the think) that overagers don’t count against the protected list until the overager cutdown date in October. So if you include Everett’s six 1988-born players, the Tips should have 56 players following the bantam draft.

Anyway, I hope that provided some insight and answered Andy’s questions.