MLS Expansion Draft 2014: Mock Draft Sees Bunbury, Mullins Selected

MLS cup is just three days away, but that means that the Expansion Draft is just six days away. With that in mind, SB Nation conducted a Mock Expansion Draft to try and get a handle on who will be moving around this offseason.

We already posted our projected list of protected New England Revolution players, as did the rest of the team blogs. Then, the guys from The Mane Land and Hudson River Blue, our new Orlando City SC and NYCFC blogs, went through the list and made their picks.

The full draft can be found here. For the sake of brevity, we'll relay to you who was picked from the Revs and how the teams picking justified those selections.

Round 2, Pick 2, 3^rd Overall - Teal Bunbury

Michael Citro, The Mane Land: Sometimes you just go with the best available player. We felt like Bunbury was a guy who would just make the team better by being on it. His goal in the semifinals at Red Bull Arena is still fresh in our minds. And at 24 he's still got a lot of soccer left in him.

At this time we were presented with the option to "pull back" a player. We elected to "pull back" Bobby Shuttleworth and protect him. In hindsight, this was probably a dumb move. He's unlikely to be selected by either team. It would be more beneficial to protect somebody like Steve Neumann, or perhaps...

Round 9, Pick 2, 18^th Overall - Patrick Mullins

Rafael Noboa y Rivera, Hudson River Blue: Mullins, a two-time Hermann Trophy award winner as the nation's top player in college, is a physical, left-footed forward, who is highly active both on and off the ball. This past season for New England, he appeared in 21 games, starting 14 of them. He scored four goals and had one assist. Like Sandoval, we think he pairs up well with Villa up top.

That pick meant that no Revolution player was eligible to be selected for the remainder of the draft, and so concluded our participation. A few notes on what we learned:

We knew leaving Teal unprotected meant he was probably going to be picked. That's the nature of the beast. As we said back when we posted the protected list, if Jay Heaps and Mike Burns find a way to protect Teal, we will by no means be upset about it.

Retracting Bobby Shuttleworth was a mistake we probably don't expect the team to make. If the team behaves the way we expect them to behave with this list, then the next logical retraction would have been Mullins or Neumann. If Mullins goes off the board, I might expect Neumann to remain untouched, but there's a shot he gets picked instead.

This is the first expansion draft since the mid-2000s where the Revs look like they're bound to lose at least one important contributor. On the one hand, it speaks volumes for where the team is, but on the other, it's depressing.

Your thoughts on the mock results?