Vegas ready to start wheeling and dealing
Upstart Golden Knights franchise expected to launch flurry of trades in advance of NHL expansion draft
BUFFALO — For about five hours Saturday, George McPhee had a front-row seat at Buffalo’s HarborCenter, watching a seemingly endless assembly line of young hockey talent wheez, grunt and sweat through a series of gruelling physical workouts.
When the testing at the NHL Scouting Combine was all over, when he’d gulped down a quick lunch after meeting with the media, he prepared to go into hiding for a couple of days.
It admittedly will be the final time he’ll be able to escape the limelight for who knows how long.
Indeed, McPhee admitted that he was leaving the combine en route to a secret place to get prepared for what he told Postmedia might be “the busiest span for any GM in the history of the National Hockey League.”
Sure, there have been other expansion teams, other expansion drafts, other newcomers to the National Hockey League. But not in the salary cap era. And not with the accompanying rules.
As such, there are wrinkles we’ve never seen before.
Some teams want McPhee to take players with bad contracts off their hands, offering highly coveted draft picks as a trade-off in order to free up cap space. Others are offering packages in exchange for McPhee’s promise not to select certain unprotected players in the expansion draft.
And in yet another twist to the Vegas story, the Golden Knights will have an exclusive 72-hour period to sign unrestricted free agents during the expansion draft starting on the morning of June 18, giving them an 11-day head start over the rest of the league. With Vegas holding that advantage, a team intrigued by a particular UFA could attempt to persuade McPhee to sign that player, then have him trade that player to the original interested franchise at a later date.
Think that’s a lot to digest? Just think how McPhee feels.
Already armed with a cache of trade offers accrued over a week of schmoozing with his fellow GMs here at the combine, McPhee’s plan was to disappear for the rest of the weekend to mull over his next moves.
Then, on Monday, the Golden Knights will be officially open for business as McPhee begins responding in earnest to trade offers, kicking off a four-week whirlwind that includes the expansion draft, NHL draft and free agency. “I suspect there might be a couple of aroundthe-clock days in store,” he says.
Maybe Rome wasn’t built in a day, but McPhee is about to build a full NHL roster in one single month.
“Things have reached the serious stage,” McPhee said. “I’ll start making and returning calls as of Monday. Trades could happen as soon as then.”
McPhee is holding his cards close to the vest, but that hasn’t stopped the scuttlebutt from ballooning at the combine. From admitting he had a talk with Buffalo Sabres GM Jason Botterill that went “really well,” to speaking highly of potentially unprotected goalie Michal Neuvirth of the Philadelphia Flyers, the speculation will only intensify from here.
“When we first looked at the expansion draft ... we sort of had an idea of what we might be able to accomplish,” McPhee said. “But there are teams that really want to protect some people and protect their rosters, and they’re willing to pay a pretty fair price to get us to lay off certain people and go in a different direction.
“There’s certainly been a lot of discussion and most of the guys have been really forthright in what they want to do, who they’ll probably expose and who they’d like to protect. We’re trying to find ways to accommodate each other. We won’t be able to do that with everyone, but there will be some deals that happen.”
Teams will submit their draft protection lists June 17, with the names released to the public the following day. From June 18-21, the Golden Knights can ink free agents, but any player Vegas signs during that period serves as their selection from that team in the expansion draft.
Vegas will submit its picks on the morning of June 21, with the results announced that night during the league’s annual awards ceremony in — you guessed it — Vegas.
McPhee and his staff will then wing their way from Sin City to Chicago for the NHL draft, which runs June 23-24. The Golden Knights hold the sixth overall pick and McPhee said Saturday he doesn’t anticipate moving up or down.