There is a problem of protection maloperation of an upstream line caused by excitation inrush due to no-load closing of a distribution transformer in distribution network lines. Thus this paper proposes an anti-excitation inrush current maloperation strategy of line protection for a distribution network based on sampling sequence shaping. When the line current meets the criteria of fast start and low second harmonic content at the same time, it will enter the current sequence shaping procedure. First, the current signal is divided into sinusoidal and distortion sections according to the stable section of the second harmonic effective value, and the auxiliary criterion is set by the length of the stable section. Subsequently, the similarity of the sine segments is calculated by determining the adaptive window length and the standard sine curve. The amplitude and phase parameters of the original sinusoidal region are obtained to complete the reshaping of the distortion region. Finally, the current signal without excitation inrush current after repair is sent to line protection for judgment. The proposed strategy can effectively cope with the excitation inrush current overlapping in the load and fault currents, and the validity and reliability of the proposed strategy are verified by simulation.