The Vegas Golden Knights Have Added an Entire 1st Line in Just 9 months

[iamjs]

Still living off all those assets acquired in the expansion draft. The system is far too generous now.

I had this discussion with somebody yesterday. It's not that the system is too generous now. It's that GMGM asked for high picks instead and got them.

In 2000, Columbus recieved a 9th (obviously a nonexistent round today) and a prospect for the condition that Evgeni Nabokov wasn't taken. Could they have asked for a 1st or even a 3rd ? Eh, maybe. But McPhee knew he had some teams in an uncomfortable situation and could ask for high picks.

 

[supsens]

I can't make myself give GMGM as much credit for the expansion draft as some people do.

When a hockey fan like myself makes a mock draft in 2 hours, and ends up having over 50% of the players they picked right, that tells you their job was pretty easy. And they had an entire staff working on it all year long.

And even the trades that you couldn't predict, were non-brainers for the most part. I mean, is there an easier position to make a trade than what Vegas had? Teams were going to lose something anyway, so by default Vegas was going to win all the trades with the only exception of passing on a good player to trade for a worse one. Which they didn't do.

But what i give GMGM a ton of credit for, is how well he recognized changes have to be made and that he can't just sit back and feel good with a team that had 90% of it's players see career years.

Last years Vegas team could be down 3-0 to the Sharks right now if im being honest - if they even make the playoffs. Dodged a bullet with Neal, Haula been hurt all season (and even if he was healthy he's probably back to playing like a 3rd liner if you look at last years playoffs and start of this season), Karlsson line turned from a line that carried this team to your typical 2nd line. Fleury wasn't as dominant and the team didn't work nearly as hard as they did last year.

But here they are, in the playoffs and looking like a strong team. And the line he went out and put together is a huge reason why.

I mean, it's easy to attract players to Vegas right now because who wouldn't want to play there. So in that sense it's not been difficult for GMGM. But you still have to be aggressive to get things done.

Didn’t everyone act like they were idiots doing all the wrong things during the draft?

 

[deckercky]

Didn’t everyone act like they were idiots doing all the wrong things during the draft?

Florida is the only egregiously bad trade. Others gave up a lot, but it made sense to protect legitimately good players (in most cases, solid proven top 4 defencemen).

Several of the pieces Vegas got turned out to be much better than anticipated.

 

[CupInSIX]

Didn’t everyone act like they were idiots doing all the wrong things during the draft?

Yyyyyyyyyyyyep.

 

[SotasicA]

People a retconning hard over Vegas, because almost everything Vegas touched turned to gold in ways even Vegas wasn't expecting. That is very unlikely to be repeated. Seattle should be setting their sights ones Vegas' original plan, try and build a decent team that doesn't get blown out of the building every night while building through the draft on a longer term 3-4 plan before competing for the playoffs.

Let's go back and look again. Vegas were not even expected to make the playoffs going into their first year. McPhee went into the draft intending to build for the future, trade players at the deadline etc. When asked if he thought the team would have turned out this good, McPhee's own words "No. We sure worked hard at this. We were as well organized as a group could be, and the objective was to be as good as we could be. No one expected this."

Let's take a look at Vegas' expectations. without the modern retconning

The Hockey writers had them at #31.


The NHL.com writers had them missing the playoffs.
TSN had Vegas a 31st.
TSN's "bold prediction/hot take" was Vegas not finishing 31st.
ESPN had them at 31
CBS had them at 30.
USAtoday had them shockingly high at #25!
ETC

HFBoards expectations were no different, Vegas would suck.

Agreed.

HfBoards after the expansion draft:

This team is going to be historically bad, their best player is who? Neal? Ouch.

This team will be putrid for years to come with som eof the moves hes rumored to have made. Look at columbus, took them 10+ years to be good. I wouldnt be suprised if Mcphee already screwed this franchise for the forseeable future

He's setting them up to tank for a few years. This isn't all that surprising to anyone with common sense.

They will likely have top 6 picks for the next 4 years, baring bad luck.

 

[Intangir]

It already has. Signing Stone put them over next years cap. Plus they still need to resign William Karlsson in addition to 2 more players to get them to the minimum roster size. To sign Karlsson and fill a full 23-man roster, they will need to shed close to $10 million in AAV.

I agree that the capsace will be tight for Vegas in the next year or so, but they still have quite a bit of room to maneuver and probably won't lose anyone too important to them down the stretch. Saying they need to shed 10M$ is a bit of an overreaction in that context.

To clarify, as per Capfriendly, the Golden Knights have 47,125M$ tied in 9 forwards (with Clarksson on IR) next year and Karlsson to re-sign. Let's say he re-signs for about 5,5M$, a low and conservative number I'll admit, they then have 52,625M$ tied in 10 forwards. On defense, they have 21,1M$ for 6 guys and Fleury takes up 7M$, for a grand total of 80,725M$ for 17 skaters dressed.

In order to be viable as a team, and to act as a buffer for injury, Vegas would need to dress ideally 23 skaters, as you've said, and keep at least 100-200k of capspace for short-term recalls and replacement, so that's 6 more contracts that eats at their 83M$ cap ceiling, and with a minimum salary of more than 600k basic math tells us that they would be over the cap.

However, and that's where it gets interesting, if they move Ryan Reaves' contract for next year (which shouldn't be too difficult if they add a mid-round pick or a young prospect), totaling 2,75M for the 2019-2020 season only, they'd then stand at 77,95M$ for 16 skaters and would then have 5,05M$ to dress 7 players. Of course, that's not a lot of room, and they still have to re-sign Gusev and accomodate rookies like Glass potentially making 925k on their ELC, with the potential to hit on their bonuses, so the management of the Golden Knights will have to pay close attention to their cap, but I think it's not something that's too worrying for them at the moment.

Tampa Bay is in a much worse situation to be completely honest, one with no easy fix, and will lose at least two good pieces (probably Stralman and Miller) off their roster, if not more.

 

[McFlash97]

dammm man, The Oilers haven't been able to add a 2nd line in 9 years.

 

[Super Cake]

As both a Sens fan and a Knights fan, i got to say that it feels weird to cheer for a team that is going to be up against the cap. lol

 

[redwings25]

the can always trade haula and fix there cap problems and get a decent return. they have done a amazing job with this team

 

[Sensmileletsgo]

Crazy how some GMs have a much easier jobs then others. Not saying McPhee hasnt been incredible, he certainly has, but it's obvious Vegas has a far easier time attracting talent then other teams around the league.

 

[Channelcat]

Didn’t everyone act like they were idiots doing all the wrong things during the draft?

Yes, and I stand by that. I think McPhee could done considerably better yet. Scary.

 

[Menzinger]

Didn’t everyone act like they were idiots doing all the wrong things during the draft?

They still could’ve gotten a lot better deals at the draft, but sort of lucked out that the wild and Panthers did incredibly stupid things instead

 

[MattySnipes]

Knew Mark Stone would be a beast for them. Terrific player, he's always had it. Great move by GM GM. Pacioretty also looking decent, good for him. Hoping Vegas knocks out the Sharks.

 

[Uncle Scrooge]

Didn’t everyone act like they were idiots doing all the wrong things during the draft?

I think it was mostly due to couple things, for example "passing" on one of the Ducks established dmen for a Theodore trade. Or going for Tuch in trade. Basically getting young players already close.

Nobody knew how that team was going to come together. For me the biggest issue was the lack of top 6 C in the draft, and GMGM said as much, thus he went after Shipachyov. That worry was wiped away by the incredible season Wild Bill had, which no one could've predicted. He was playing bottom 6 in training camp until some games into the season Gallant gave him a chance because he didn't like Ship.

But i mean at the end of the day, for the most part there wasn't many options per team. And even the ones where there was options, like Columbus, Karlsson + assets over something else from Cbus made sense because they needed centers.

Bottom line is i don't think there's a team Vegas could've picked in the ED that made anyone say they will be good. You don't get many big name players regardless and when you don't have them people won't think you're going to be that good.

But luck played a part. It didn't take a genious Marchessault + Smith from Florida was lucky as hell. But if Karlsson doesn't blossom like he did, Vegas doesn't have a top line that dominates and that changes the script completely.

 

[Sergei DRW]

I really like Gusev and think he has the right mentality to thrive in the NHL. But I'm not expecting anything on the Panarin level.

It all comes down to the situation. Panarin was put on the Kane line from the start to thrive and he did. And made a name for himself and pushed Kane to NHL top stardom.
If they put Gusev on the 3rd grinding line - well he is too small for a grinder for sure.

 

[Kamiccolo]

Not really

29 other teams could have acquired Stone but they didn't. The merit is fully on Vegas for being the ones to land him

Considering their GM refuses to deal within conference this is just not true.

 

[CupInSIX]

Considering their GM refuses to deal within conference this is just not true.

Columbus is in the East

 

[Kamiccolo]

Columbus is in the East

He said 29 other teams could have traded for him. Ottawa is in the east. That eliminates 16 other teams.

 

[SensontheRush]

He said 29 other teams could have traded for him. Ottawa is in the east. That eliminates 16 other teams.

You don't understand that Ottawa traded Duchene to Columbus?

 

[Kamiccolo]

You don't understand that Ottawa traded Duchene to Columbus?

Difference between a player like Duchene and Stone or Karlsson.

 

[SensontheRush]

Difference between a player like Duchene and Stone or Karlsson.

You are SO right. We traded Chris Kelly to Boston, so that's another example.

 

[Kamiccolo]

You are SO right. We traded Chris Kelly to Boston, so that's another example.

Doiron got ripped off on a deal because he didn't want to trade someone to the east, only for that team to flip them for more value to an eastern team. It's well documented how he feels with these guys. Duchene is meh. Guys like Stone, Karlsson, etc were sens in their DNA. They weren't letting them go to any team where they play them 4-6 times a year

 

[DudeWhereIsMakar]

What amazes me is that this was basically an upgrade from James Neal, David Perron, Tomas Tatar and Oscar Lindberg.

 

[Mortimer Snerd]

Eh, they moved two of their premiere prospects, but they still have a decent pool, Glass and Hague both look solid to come up next year. And when you go to the Cup Final, it'd be a little weird not to try to exploit the current window, and the price of improvement is always picks and prospects.

They have 2 prospects. That is not a decent pool. It is a puddle.
They have a severe cap problem.

 

[General Disarray]

Not really

29 other teams could have acquired Stone but they didn't. The merit is fully on Vegas for being the ones to land him

Exactly. They paid a huge price to get him. The Jets and Preds probably wanted him too but weren't willing to pay the cost. Vegas knew they had a legit shot at the cup and went for it.