I Spent Hours Drafting the Vegas Golden Knights
Hi, I’m Julian McKenzie. And I have an expansion draft problem.
As of now, the Vegas Golden Knights have two players, rookie Reid Duke and highly sought Kontinental Hockey League centre Vadim Shipachyov. By June 20th, the two Golden Knights will finally have more company once the team fills out its roster in the league’s expansion draft.
Vegas must pick one player from each NHL team, but not from each team’s protected lists (each team can protect seven forwards, three defensemen, and a goaltender OR eight skaters who can be either forwards or defensemen, and a goalie). There’s a full list of expansion draft rules below:
I figured it’d be fun to participate in one of these expansion draft simulations and I learned very quickly why I do not have a future in hockey management. Not right now anyway.
The first simulator I tried was from TSN. They offer a list of players, their statistics, their salaries and their duration. I must admit, I went a little crazy and picked the best available players, regardless of their impending free agent status.
Jared Spurgeon? Derek Stepan? Alex Radulov? Highly unlikely they’ll be made available come June 17. Alex Killorn and Mathieu Perreault might weren’t as surprising but it was still surprising to see both those names available.
I made line combinations but completely did not account for Vadim Shipachyov, who would very likely centre that first line. Oops.
As for the goaltending situation? Not great, according to Covfefe Guy below:
He sure was surprised to see Jared Spurgeon available. All good to see Malcolm Subban develop in the American Hockey League in Chicago, but Cam Ward and UFA Mike Condon??? Not good enough, especially for Covfefe Guy.
Alright, back to the drawing board.
Every single one of these guys will be under contract come 2017–18. MAF is in the fold as the starter while Dustin Tokarski and Antoine Bibeau will battle for a backup spot. Why Tokarski over puck-moving dman Sami Vatanen?
While I admired the second incarnation of my Vegas Golden Knights squad, Twitter friend HabsLaughs put me on to another draft simulator, from CapFriendly.com
The CapFriendly.com expansion draft simulator looks better and the players protected are a bit more realistic. You can either automatically quick protect rosters for all 30 teams (like I did) or you can do it manually. As shown above, CapFriendly protects players based on crowd sourced popularity.
There are a few points of contention, notably: Matt Murray is unprotected as opposed to Marc-Andre Fleury, who has an no-movement clause. Popular belief says the Penguins will ask Fleury to waive his NMC and risk having him go unprotected as opposed to Matt Murray, who is this close to a second Stanley Cup. If you’re wondering how Murray is eligible to be unprotected despite technically being a rookie, his entry-level contract expires this summer and his three-year, $11 million deal will kick in.
He probably won’t be available for George McPhee later this month. But if he was, he’d take him. And for the purpose of this simulator, if I can have Matt Murray, why can’t I take him? Jakob Silfverberg is also available here, and it may have come at the expense of the protected (and tradeable) Sami Vatanen. That aside, I present VGKIII:
Goaltending situation looks a lot better than the first time I did this. This took about two hours of sifting through CapFriendly, looking through player statistics off Hockeydb. I went from 11pm to 1am (my best work happens in the late night).
For some reason I was really frugal with my first few selections, and I had to take on some bad contracts to reach the cap floor. Matt Stajan’s contract (which has a no-trade clause) isn’t great, especially for a guy who will likely fight for bottom six minutes with William Karlsson, Kyle Brodziak, Jordan Weal, Marcus Kruger (who will likely come to the team alongside Trevor Van Riemsdyk), Adam Lowry, and Brian Boyle (Yes, in a previous incarnation, I had Brian Boyle as a top-line centre, while completely messing up the fact that Shipachyov is a centre not a winger). But, he’s a UFA in 2018 which means he could come off the books after year one. Fortunately, some of these players can be moved to the wing, or just be left in the American Hockey League.
Valeri Nichuskin reportedly has a 50–50 chance of returning to the National Hockey League this coming season. If Dallas does make him available, I’d jump on him (11g, 24pts in 36GP in the KHL this past season).
For the purpose of my line combos (keep scrolling), I’ll exclude him for now.
Speaking of the American Hockey League, I had that in mind when I selected Jake Dotchin.
But it’s still not perfect, to me. I’m not huge on the massive logjam of defensemen I’ve created. I could give myself some breathing room by drafting a d-man that will be a UFA this summer and perhaps just letting him go. Is there a way I can not have Matt Stajan?
It’s at that moment, where I felt I was truly losing my mind. Not at 1:30 am, writing down line combinations in a Google Keep, but when I started re-drafting for the fourth time.
It’s 10:15pm. Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals is on television, and I’m still trying to put together this damn team. I’m trying to find a player who will bring us above the minimum cap hit of $43.8m. I’m at $42.4m.
I thought I could get away with drafting Kris Versteeg. I switched him for Lance Bouma. As a result:
I’m still holding on to Nichuskin. And depending on whether he does come back, that may play a part in contract negotiations for Radim Vrbata.
This lineup has a weird combo of speed and grit that I kind of dig. I also found a way to switch MAF in for Matt Murray, which is another thing you can do in CapFriendly.com as opposed to TSN.ca’s. I also switched Malcolm Subban in favour of Philip Grubauer in Washington. The AHL will also get a ton of reinforcements.
I’m not budging from this roster. I’ve exerted enough energy on expansion draft simulations for the weekend. I don’t envy VGK general manager George McPhee at all. Good luck picking your team, sir.
