Vegas dealt a winning — but wrong — hand in NHL expansion draft

The Vegas Golden Knights may be an amazing story, yet also one that exposes major flaws in the expansion draft that need to be rectified before Seattle joins the NHL in a few years’ time.

Vegas, of course, stunned the hockey world by winning the Pacific Division and coming second overall in the Western Conference during a season in which they shattered practically every meaningful record for a pro expansion team.

The Vegas ‘roll’ has continued into the post-season where they dispatched the Los Angeles Kings in the first round — in a four-game sweep no less.

And now the Knights have a very winnable second-round series against a San Jose Sharks team that many thought would take a step back in 2018-19, but instead finished third in the Pacific and wiped out second-seeded Anaheim in four games in Round 1.

Commissioner Gary Bettman and his underlings are no doubt reveling in Vegas’s instant success, knowing it might encourage other markets to offer up the requisite billions either for an expansion team or to pick up the pieces for one of the 31-team league’s struggling franchises.

Vegas was simply dealt a winning hand, pun intended.

Going back to the original wave of expansion that doubled the “Original Six” in 1967, the new franchises were basically given a select group of washed-up players and a few draft picks.

The six expansion teams (Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Minnesota, California, Los Angeles and St. Louis) were originally placed in a separate division.

The one positive for the new teams was the division playoff winner made it to the Stanley Cup Final. St. Louis, guided by Scott Bowman, made it to the final three straight years but got swept each time by either Montreal or Boston (remember the famous Bobby Orr flying through the air photo after the series-winning overtime goal?).

It didn’t get that much better for subsequent expansion teams. Buffalo and Vancouver joined in 1970, and the Sabres got the luck of the draw in picking the great Gilbert Perreault, and he and his “French Connection” linemates guided the Sabres to an appearance in the Stanley Cup Final in 1975.

Ironically the Sabres fell in six games to the Flyers, who won their second of two Cups after becoming the first of the new wave of expansion teams to lift the hallowed chalice in 1974.

The Canucks staggered along largely in mediocrity until the memorable Cinderella run to the final under Roger Neilson in 1982, where they were swept by the Islanders. The league since added 17 more teams and while some of those like the Islanders eventually enjoyed great success, the early seasons were painful as those clubs struggled mightily with overmatched lineups.

The Washington Capitals and Kansas City joined in 1974 and the Caps set a futility record that still stands at 8-67-5 in their first season. Kansas City wasn’t much better and was eventually on the move to Colorado and then New Jersey.

Edmonton, Hartford, Winnipeg and Quebec joined the NHL after the WHA folded in 1980. It would be difficult to classify them as expansion teams, especially the Oilers, who led by Gretzky, Messier, Coffey and Fuhr et al won four Cups in the 1980s. And one more after No. 99 left in 1990.

Even recent expansion teams like Columbus, Nashville, Anaheim, San Jose, Tampa Bay, Florida and Ottawa were largely horrible in the early years before eventually becoming competitive. Growing pains were an accepted part of being an expansion team, and patience had to be a virtue.

But Vegas took advantage of the new expansion draft rules and were able to load up on quality young players like William Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith, and still-productive veterans like James Neal and Marc-Andrew Fleury.

They were also able to accumulate even more top draft picks to keep their “hands off” of drafting certain players. That allowed them to add a quality veteran like Tomas Tatar from Detroit at the trade deadline while still leaving Vegas with a litany of extra picks in the next few drafts.

There are those who are enjoying seeing Vegas jump the queue, so to speak, and become instant contenders, while Original Six teams like the Habs, Hawks, Wings and Rangers — as well as Connor McDavid and the Oilers — miss the playoffs.

Most of those teams and others find themselves in full “rebuild” mode, which is where Vegas really should be if proper thought had been put into the draft process.

Some of those established teams could conceivably rebuild quickly on the fly, or they could languish for years like the Maple Leafs did before finally getting the luck of the draw with some elite top draft picks to contend again.

This new system, to me anyway, doesn’t seem quite right. If Vegas goes on and wins the Stanley Cup, then what?

I’d be OK with them winning in 2025 or something. Just not now.

David Crompton is a sports reporter at the Penticton Herald.