MISSION LAS VEGAS HAS KEPT GM BUSY
NHL’s first expansion in salary-cap era poses its challenges
“I lost my train of thought,” said the voice on the other end of the line, trailing off.
A few seconds of dead air pass before George McPhee — who can be excused for the odd momentary lapse in concentration after recently tying a bow on a 60-day, 30-person hiring frenzy — caught up to the train.
“I remember what I wanted to say,” he continued. “We wanted talented, experienced people with low ego that want to work. It’s not about the individual, it’s about the organization. And the work isn’t really work. It’s fun for these people.”
If work’s fun, McPhee has been having a blast since July 13, the day he was unveiled as general manager of the still-to-be-named Las Vegas NHL club. It’s October and the franchise’s off-ice lineup is intact; “95 per cent” of the team’s hockey operations roles have been filled, according to McPhee.
“The first six weeks were incredibly busy, going from 6:30 every morning until probably 9:30, 10 o’clock at night, seven days a week,” said the 58-year-old hockey lifer. “But that’s what it took, and we got it done.”
McPhee can exhale.
What was once a two-man show — McPhee and assistant GM Kelly McCrimmon — has morphed into a brimming front office. The nearfinal product includes nine directors, a senior adviser, 14 scouts, one analyst and two assistants. (A ruling on additional hockey analytics hires is imminent, McPhee said, while the coaching staff likely will be named some time next spring.)
“Really, it’s a startup company. We’re starting from scratch,” said McCrimmon, a longtime junior hockey executive who has declined NHL offers in the past but couldn’t balk at the opportunity to ride shotgun next to McPhee on such a rare project.
“The chance to be a part of this team, right from the early stages, was appealing.”
Appealing, indeed. This is the first time the NHL has chosen to expand during the salary-cap era, and the functional challenges facing the Vegas group vary greatly from those faced by the Minnesota Wild and Columbus Blue Jackets in 2000.
Starting with next June’s amateur and expansion drafts, every player-personnel decision made by Vegas, which will begin play out of the 17,500-seat T-Mobile Arena a few months later, will be at the mercy of the salary cap.
Inheriting nothing in the way of positions or employees — and with a green light from ownership throughout their short tenure at the helm — McPhee, McCrimmon and senior vice-president of hockey operations Murray Craven have been free to bend and twist the structure and culture of the front office whichever way they please.
“The model we’re using here is really much different than what we did in Washington,” said McPhee, the Capitals’ GM from 1997 to 2014. “There are certain things that I wanted here that I have now. It’s just a different model. I don’t really want to get into the details on how it’s different, but it is a much different model.”
The Vegas hires offer a mix of experience (“Bill Belichick might be the best executive in football right now and he’s on his third team,” McPhee noted); familiarity (many employees have a tie to the McPhee-run Capitals); and fresh blood (salary-cap specialist Andrew Lugerner, for instance, has never worked for an NHL team in an official capacity).
“‘Low-ego, hard-working people’ is a pretty good description of a lot of the people who have come to work for us,” said McCrimmon, echoing his boss’s no-I-in-team mantra.
“We have quite the cross-section of people,” McPhee added. “We didn’t want clones, we wanted people from all walks of life and different experiences in hockey.”
A handful of the organization’s top dogs — McPhee, McCrimmon, Craven, director of hockey operations Misha Donskov and Lugerner, director of hockey legal affairs — have relocated to the Vegas area.
Some who spend the bulk of their time on the road, such as Vaughn Karpan (director of player personnel), Bob Lowes (assistant director of player personnel), Scott Luce (director of amateur scouting), and Wil Nichol (director of player development), will be key parts of the daily process, too.
Youngsters, such as 28-year-old hockey operations analyst Tom Poraszka, founder of GeneralFanager. com and the most recent hiring, as well as 25-year-old Quebec-based scout Raphael Pouliot, will also have their voices heard.
Those on the inside use words like “inclusiveness” and “synergy” to describe the dynamic, and senior adviser David Conte believes McPhee possesses the right personality to organize the chaos.
Conte and McPhee met nearly 40 years ago when the GM played forward for Bowling Green State University, but this is the first time the pair has worked together in a front office environment. Colour Conte impressed.
“I say this about Lou (Lamoriello) all the time: he listens more than he talks,” says Conte, who spent 31 years working for Lamoriello’s New Jersey Devils. McPhee’s the same way.
Added Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Connor Carrick, a former Capital whom McPhee drafted in 2012: “He was a great leader at the top. I know myself and a lot of guys respected him. I’m sure he’ll do well in Vegas.”
With two sets of meetings behind them — including an early- October gathering in Vegas, which featured a mock expansion draft — the puck has officially been dropped on this gap season.
The hard work is only beginning for this green front office.