Today figures to be a busy and significant day for Real Salt Lake.

Not only does a half-day trade window open from 7-10 a.m., but a few hours later the club must submit its list of 11 protected players to the league office in advance of Wednesday's expansion draft for the new Seattle Sounders franchise.

For RSL players seemingly on the bubble like Dema Kovalenko, Ian Joy and Andy Williams, it is obviously a pretty significant day.

Each MLS team is allowed to protect 11 players from its 28-man roster, on top of any additional Generation adidas players who are automatically protected. RSL has three of those exemption players: Chris Seitz, Tony Beltran and Alex Nimo.

For everyone else, they'll find out today how significant they factor into the long-term plans of Real Salt Lake's coaching staff. By league rules, of the 11 protected players, three of them must be foreign players.

Seattle will be allowed to pick 10 total players in the expansion draft, but not more than one from each team.

With about 14 or 15 players worthy of protecting, it seems inevitable that one of RSL's players is bound for Seattle.

Expansion drafts in some respects are one big guessing game. Two years ago for Toronto's expansion draft, RSL left Jason Kreis unprotected, figuring there was no way an aging veteran with a high salary would be selected. Toronto had other plans though. It knew how important Kreis was to the RSL franchise and selected him, knowing it could then trade him right back to RSL.

That experience should help RSL better prepare for Wednesday's expansion draft. There's been talk that RSL will leave Nick Rimando unprotected because Seattle doesn't need a keeper with the signing of home-town player Kasey Keller. It would be a risky decision for RSL if it unfolds that way, because expansion teams aren't only drafting future players but trade bait as well.

The expansion draft takes place Wednesday at 11 a.m. Trading may resume after the draft, followed at 12:30 by the deadline for teams to submit names for the waiver draft.

Regardless of what happens to RSL's roster in the expansion draft or the waiver draft, the makeup of the team will definitely be different next year. At last week's MLS Board of Governors meeting, the league decided to disband the developmental league, which reduces every team's minimum roster size. Instead of 28-man rosters, next year teams will carry 18-20 senior roster players and 4-6 developmental players.

Teams will be able to determine their own roster size, and it will largely depend on their competition schedule each year.

There are about six RSL players who figure to be absolute shoo-ins to be on RSL's protected list, guys like Javier Morales, Nat Borchers, Jamison Olave, Will Johnson, Robbie Russell and Chris Wingert. As for the other seven or eight players who started significant minutes in 2008, things are up in the air.

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E-mail: jedward@desnews.com