When they got, Marc Methot, in the expansion draft, first question they asked him was, can we get your 10 team no-trade list.
People are right about Vegas, but that was a different situation entirely. They weren't drafting just to build a team. They were taking the most valuable asset off each team and flipping them.
You can make an argument about that not being the right thing to do, because players are humans and all that stuff, but it's probably the right way strategically to run an expansion draft.
In terms of people talking about Vegas not being attached to Stone. They gave him a NMC and a front loaded contract loaded with buyout proof signing bonuses. They did the same thing to Pietrangelo. They are married to both of those players.
To put that into perspective, no other player they signed has been given the same level of certainty. Hanifin has a NTC, but not a NMC. So they could theoretically threaten to waive him like Tampa did with McDonagh. Hertl's NMC changes to a NMC+modified NTC after a few years. Eichel has a NMC, but they didn't sign that contract, and he doesn't have any signing bonuses for the majority of the contract, so they would still have an out through a buyout.
That is not an argument that they would move on from any of those players, but the point is that every day Mark Stone wakes up he knows there is nothing Vegas can do to get rid of him. They are married. He controls his destiny with that contract.
Would you trade Sanderson for Stone right now? We probably don’t get Sanderson if we keep Stone. Let go of the past.
You can probably twist any argument that way, but what if Mark Stone was so good on Ottawa that it convinced Sanderson who idolized Stone to switch to wing, and then he dropped in the draft to say 30? Then when he came back to Ottawa because we already had Mark Stone, he switched back to D, but he was also better because he bulked up big time to play wing (He is too skinny, and board play would be a concern in deep), so now he is like a 285 lbs monster but also a top pairing D.
It's a shame Melnyk traded Stone so we couldn't see what a 285 lbs Jake Sanderson could do in this league.