Vancouver Whitecaps President Bob Lenarduzzi says there are “lots of surprises” in the list of players made available for the 2010 Expansion Draft. Clubs had to select their list of 11 protected players on Monday afternoon, and both the Whitecaps and Portland Timbers will make their selections on Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. ET. Both teams will be able to select 10 players from the list. For the full list of available players,
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“We have put a lot of preparatory work into trying to determine what players each of the clubs would protect and as a result which ones would be made available,” said Lenarduzzi. “As we expected, there are lots of surprises. Players have been protected that we thought wouldn’t be and vice versa, but we have a priority list that we will work from.”




“It complicates matters because there is another team selecting. If we didn’t have another team that we didn’t have to worry about in this process we could probably be a bit more forthcoming in advance. We don’t want to tip our hand as to the strategy that we have determined to get the best possible 10 players.”




“We know our first pick. What we do with the second pick will be determined by what Portland will do with their first pick. There are some big names available, and it is up to us to decide whether we want to take a chance on some players. The majority of the Designated Players on the list are in the twilight of their careers so we wouldn’t be able to build a club around them.”




Lenarduzzi said the Whitecaps had discussions with Portland about whether they wanted to discuss the process ahead of time, but it was decided that the teams will work separately. “We had a dialogue about whether we wanted to be proactive and share the picks that we would like to make with each other so we could have a better opportunity to calculate things as we go through, but it was decided that it wasn’t the best way to go,” explained Lenarduzzi.




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