Vegas hold cards for expansion draft
Golden Knights’ GM spent Monday swinging trades, plans to pick team today
George McPhee is spending a fleeting moment as The Godfather of the NHL during the Vegas Golden Knights’ expansion window.
He holds the cards for a significant chunk of the league’s talent, fielding calls from fellow general managers willing to trade something to keep McPhee from plucking certain players from their rosters, or to take someone from another team to flip in a deal.
All trade roads run through Vegas right now. And every move has its price ahead of Wednesday’s official announcement of the Vegas roster.
“Whatever you want to give us has to be better than what we can claim from that club,” McPhee said on Sunday. “Then we’re going to go to that club and say: ‘We have interest in this player, there’s another club that has interest in this player. How do we want to do this? How can we protect your roster? You can negotiate your way out of this if you wish.”’
He emphasized that each team will be contacted and given the opportunity to have a say in protecting its roster. But he said Monday was the final day for GMs to make pitches and hold negotiations because Vegas was planning to pick its team today.
“It’s going to take us a while to pick the team (today), because one change in this matrix affects everything,” McPhee said. “So that’s why you can’t get too cute and try to complicate it too much.”
Vegas must pick one player from each of the existing 30 teams, but there’s only so much room on the roster next season even with some minor-league prospects thrown in.
“The expansion draft, I think the way it’s set up now is quite interesting,” said Capitals assistant GM Ross Mahoney, who worked under McPhee for 17 years. “I’m really interested to see how much movement that there’s going to be.”
Shortly after protected lists were released on Sunday morning, GMs began calling McPhee to try to poach available players from other teams. Opportunistic GMs can feed the Golden Knights’ future to get a player who otherwise wouldn’t be on the trade market.
“Everybody’s going to have conversations,” Brad Treliving of the Calgary Flames said. “The staring contest ends . . . . Now you start to have discussions and see if there’s things in there that can help.” Need a goalie? McPhee may be able to help. “There’s a lot of unprotected goalies out there,” Arizona Coyotes GM John Chayka said. “Vegas doesn’t need 10. They only need a couple, and there’s opportunities for trades from that perspective.”
McPhee plans to finalize the roster tonight, check with the NHL to make sure everything’s good to go, sleep on it and submit it Wednesday morning before the deadline.
McPhee figures three or four new players will be in Vegas for the reveal show on Wednesday night. By the time the initial Vegas roster is unveiled, McPhee might be smiling even bigger than he was Sunday when he saw the options in front of him.