Anaheim would have dealt Vatanen and bought out Bieksa if they couldn't reach a deal with Vegas and would have gotten Vermette.

In case you have forgotten.... transactions were at a stand still before the expansion and all teams had to make protection lists, if Anaheim wanted to make that trade it would have had to been through Vegas. And Vatanen went into the draft unprotected. So what your saying doesn't make sense.

Coming from his time in the Caps, I kind of figured McPhee would draft Grubauer, and then sign Alzner and Shattenkirk as UFAs. Kronwall and Gaborik might be a little over the hill... but you've built a solid roster. I'd guess Staal gets more minutes than Thornton... he scored, like, seventeen more points last year. That might mean that Thornton is a waste of cap space, and you could divide his ridiculous cap hit among all the other UFAs above to take care of the argument that _____ would never sign with an expansion club.

Also, first commenter is referencing interviews with McPhee where he revealed that all the trades they made as part of the expansion draft had been agreed to before the roster freeze to, indeed, prevent such moves that could have kept Vegas from taking a lot of promising young talent. On the other hand, the roster you've built above is mostly UFAs, and they were available. So the fact that Vatanen and Staal probably weren't really options... meh. Except that.... Staal is the only guy on this who scored sixty points last year in the NHL, and is actually your first line center, and is the reason this team really does contend, so the fact that they couldn't actually get a guy as good as Staal... that's why they mostly chose youth over accomplishments, and look like a rebuilding club. There was nobody to build around right away.

It was reported the Ducks had made a deal with Vegas before the freeze. They would have traded Vatanen and bought out Bieksa before the freeze if they couldn't reach a deal before the freeze, but they did.

Yes, Eli said that


Yea some of the contract negotiations could've been done differently or not at all, could've also signed UFAs this summer with that theoretical extra cap space too

Lol @ "this team would win the cup".

Might as well rename the team to the Vegas Has-Beens.

Radulov and Gagner an d others were UFAs, what makes you think they would have signed with Vegas? They didn't after July 1 so McPhee didn't want those players. IMO Radulov and Gagner were poor signings that Dallas and Canucks will regret.

I disagree with Griffin Reinhart.

I saw him last a year ago, and he had made just about zero improvement since his draft. Kid can't skate or follow the puck in his head, wouldn't even want him on the farm team.

Good effort at trying something different though


It will be interesting to compare if Vegas would have been better off taking this path. Tanking hasn't paid off for most since the 2015 McDavid draft, and not really anyone since the 2016 Matthews draft where the very last placed teams had better odds.

Flyers might end up being the new model of an on-the-fly re-build

TSN put together a website where you can pick one player from each team: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/assemble-the-knights/draft-simulator

Every time I picked a team, I started with an eye to build around Vatanen, Staal, and Shattenkirk, built all the way up to the cap, and I couldn't be sure I would make the playoffs, although I think there was a strong chance they could have.

I don't think there's any team you can build that can guarantee a Stanley Cup, but McPhee has made a couple trades to get a team to the finals, watched it fall apart, and rebuilt it through the draft to be a contender for over a decade. He's clearly building through the draft this time, but I think he's got some interesting players with a lot of long-term potential, and he might have a surprisingly half-decent group of defensemen, depending which ones he keeps around.



They each had about 50 points last year, right? I think they've each had some up and down years, and it's hard to predict the future, especially with all new teammates, but if a team can add a guy who gets 50 points, and not give anybody up, that's usually a good move. I'll acknowledge that one of those contracts somehow has twice the cap hit of the other, but I suppose some teams value goals more than assists. Should be fun to watch and see what they do. Between Gagner and Vanek, I think Vancouver added more goals for less money than Dallas with Radulov, but we'll see.