It's not that we'll have trouble finding players to meet the requirements, but rather that we have limited protection slots.
Panarin, Kreider, Zib, Buch, Chytil, Strome. That's 6. We could then protect 1 of Lemieux, Howden, Gauthier and Fast (if re-signed).
If we are protecting Strome just so we can trade him, I'd rather just trade him before then and protect someone else. Say we don't re-sign Fast. We protect 2 of Lemieux, Howden and Gauthier, then expose the other along with Strome. If they take Strome, we clear cap space and lose a player we didn't want long term anyway. Otherwise, they take the odd man out, but at least we protected the players we wanted, and we can still trade Strome.