I think people are ignoring the cap aspects of the expansion process. If SEA takes Tarasenko, Voracek, Eberle, and Giordano, that's 28M in cap space. Over 1/3 or the cap in 4 guys. They are *required* to take 30 guys, meaning they'd only have 53.5M to bring in an additional 26 players.
There are also guys like Zucker (5.5M) and Niederreiter (5.5M) available, and this is ignoring side deals that could see a guy like Henrique (5.1M) heading to SEA.
That's kinda the point of the ED. Teams are intentionally leaving good but overpaid players unprotected so that SEA can bail them out of bad contracts. Guys on good deals are not getting exposed.
They simply have to take some very low <1M salary guys just to make the cap work. In that context, a guy like Bastian makes a lot of sense - he's young, cheap, RFA. A guy you could plug in for a year and move on from when you have a better idea of what your team is.
They won’t take a lot of the priciest guys either.
This is from this Athletic article.
Expansion draft: What the Kraken can learn from Vegas and why they won't choose the best available player
What people sometimes forget is how unexciting that first list of Golden Knights players actually was. Ten of the 30 players chosen by the Golden Knights in the actual expansion draft never played for Vegas and five others played 60 games or fewer. It means one-half of the players they selected in the expansion draft itself didn’t make any sort of meaningful contribution to the organization’s rapid success.
That’s also an important fact to file away when fans of the Kraken begin to wonder why a handful of minor-leaguers they’ve never heard of might be chosen by Seattle ahead of bigger, sexier names.
Vegas created a template: The Golden Knights didn’t need — or want — 30 players signed to NHL contracts coming out of the expansion draft. For starters, they only needed 23 to play in the NHL. Moreover, they had to find room in the lineup for all the warm bodies acquired in their side deals, which is really where the strength of that inaugural team lay.
Seattle will do some things differently, but accumulating too many contracts too soon isn’t going to be one of them.
They’ll select some players on expiring contracts, and then not bid for them as free agents, just letting them walk away. In Vegas’s case, there were teams where they’d probably have preferred to pass rather than select someone from an ultra-thin protected list.
Since that wasn’t an option, they dug deep into an organization’s system to extract a player that ranked low on the name-recognition scale, hoping there was a glimmer of an upside. Many times, their assessments were correct.
Vegas selected William Carrier from the Buffalo Sabres, who’d only played 41 NHL games (plus 127 in the AHL) prior to being the Vegas selection. From Detroit, they took Tomas Nosek, who up to that point had played 121 AHL games and only 17 in the NHL. From Los Angeles, the Golden Knights had the chance to select players from the Kings’ Stanley Cup core — such as Dustin Brown and Jeff Carter — but ultimately opted for a less sexy option: Brayden McNabb. All three — Carrier, Nosek and McNabb — have proven to be useful contributors in Vegas’s short history, even if they were largely unknown minor leaguers, or in McNabb’s case, a useful depth player on defence, at the time they were selected.
Now, some of the players Vegas chose were byproducts of the pre-arranged deals made with teams such as Anaheim, Minnesota, Columbus, Florida, the Islanders and others to land either good prospects (Shea Theodore, Alex Tuch) or high draft choices (extra first-rounders that allowed them to draft Nick Suzuki and Erik Brannstrom and later flip them in the deals for Max Pacioretty and Mark Stone).
Over the course of their first summer, the Golden Knights traded away some of their defensive surplus (Marc Methot, David Schlemko, Alexei Emelin, Trevor van Riemsdyk). Others didn’t last in the organization past the first few days of NHL free agency (J.F. Berube, Connor Brickley, Chris Thorburn). Still, others went on long-term injury reserve from the start and never saw the light of day (Clayton Stoner). But even after all those player shuffles, the Golden Knights still had too many players on NHL contracts and thus ran into a waiver issue before opening night.
By the time the Golden Knights completed their first regular season roughly half of the players chosen in the actual expansion draft had made important contributions to that team’s success.
Up front: Karlsson, Marchessault, Perron, Haula and Neal were five of the top six scorers (Reilly Smith was the sixth, added from Florida to take on Marchessault’s contract). Additionally, a handful of energy players made important contributions at the bottom end of the roster: Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Nosek, Lindblom (sic) [they meant Oscar Lindberg, got love the Athletic lack of proofreaders], Eakin and Carrier.
On defense: Nate Schmidt, Colin Miller, McNabb and Derek Engelland, all played 75 games or more on defence, and were four of the five ice time leaders on the blue line (Theodore was the fifth; he played in 61 games; averaged 20:21, and had 29 points — a sign of exciting things to come).
In goal: Fleury was an absolute difference maker: He won 29 games, lost only 13 in regulation, and had a 2.24 GAA and a .927 save percentage.
Obviously Karlsson, Marchessault, Nosek, Carrier, McNabb and Fleury are still with the team.
Both Neal and Perron were UFAs after the first season and both left.
Lindberg was a toss in w/ the Stone trade at the 2019 TDL. Bellemare walked as a UFA in the 2019 off-season. Engelland retired after 2019-20.
Erik Haula was RFA who got a 3 year/2.75m deal in June 2017 and was traded on June 27 2019 for Nicholas Roy and 2021 5th round pick.
Colin Miller was an RFA who got a 4 year/3.875m deal in July 2018 and was traded to Buffalo on June 29 2019 for a 2021 2nd (STL #49) and 2022 BUF 5th.
Cody Eakin was traded for a conditional 2021 4th (it’s the #114 pick now) at the 2020 TDL to Winnipeg.
Schmidt was emergency cap dumped to Vancouver for a 2022 3rd last off-season.
Here’s the deals which happen at Entry Draft, involved “Expansion Draft Considerations” (EDC) got Vegas:
JUNE 21
2017 6th (BUF #161 Jiri Patera)
for
BUF: EDC
Reilly Smith
for
FLA: 2018 4th (VGK #123 Jack Gorniak)* & EDC
*Montreal drafts this player, getting it in a pick trade from SJS at the draft after SJS got it from FLA after the Sharks immediately flipped Mike Hoffman after trading for him from OTT on June 19th. (Which is still hilarious to me.)
2017 5th (BOS #142 Jack Dugan)
for
CAR: EDC
Nikita Gusev, 2017 2nd (TBL #45 Alexandre Texier) & 2018 4th (PIT #115 Paul Cotter)
for
TBL: EDC
Vegas trades the 2nd the next day and I believe Vegas traded Gusev at some point as well.
Mikhail Grabovski, Jake Bischoff, 2017 1st (NYI Erik Brannstrom), 2019 2nd (NYI #54 Robert Mastrosimone)
for
NYI: EDC
The 2nd was used in the Tatar trade with Detroit at the 2018 TDL and Brannstrom went in the 2019 Stone TDL deal.
Shea Theadore
for
EDC (ANA)
Alex Tuch
for
MIN: 2018 3rd (VGK #92 Conor Dewer) & EDC
David Clarkson (with 3 years/5.25m left on his dead contract), 2017 1st (CBJ #24 Kristian Vesalainen), 2019 2nd (WPG #82 Samuel Fagemo)
for
CBJ: EDC
They immediately flip the 1st (see: the next deal). The 2nd is used in the Patches trade in Sept 2018 and MTL then uses it in a pick trade w/ LA at the 2019 draft. They trade Clarkson’s contract, with a 2020 4th (VGK #122 William Villeneuve), for Garrett Sparks in July 2019.
2017 1st (#13 WPG Nick Suzuki), 2019 3rd (WPG #82 Micheal Vukojevic)
for
WPG: 2017 1st (CBJ #24 Kristian Vesalainen) & EDC
Suzuki is traded for Patches in Sept 2018. At the 2019 draft, VGK traded the 3rd in a pick trade to SJS and then SJS traded it to us in another pick trade. I
pick trades.
2020 2nd (#46 PIT Drew Commesso)
for
PIT: EDC
This was the 2nd they got from the Pens for taking Fleury. CHI ended up getting it in the 3-way 2020 TDL deal for Lehner.
*Then it’s (mostly) flipping defensemen time*
June 22
2017 2nd (PIT #62 Jake Leschyshyn)
for
CAR: Trevor van Riemsdyk & 2018 7th (VGK #216 Riley Hughes)
2019 5th (MTL #139 Marcus Kallionkieli)
for
MTL: David Schlemko
June 24
Keegan Kolesar
for
CLB: 2017 2nd (TBL #45 Alexandre Texier)
June 26
Dylan Ferguson, 2020 2nd (DAL #61 Egor Sokolov)
For
DAL: Marc Mathot
The 2nd used in the Mark Stone trade.
July 1
2019 3rd (NSH #86 Layton Ahac)
For
NSH: Alexei Emelin (1.1m, 26.8%, retained)
