Revisiting the Vegas Golden Knights expansion draft
In the history of NHL, expansion teams have always had an uphill struggle at the beginning of their tenure. Picking a team of spare parts from the other franchises is supposed to make a bad team. The existing franchises take the expansion fee from some billionaire and then proceed to beat up on their team for the foreseeable future.
The two teams prior to the Vegas Golden Knights, Minnesota Wild and Columbus Blue Jackets have had a hard time cementing themselves as legitimate contenders and destinations for marquee players. The team prior to Columbus and Minnesota, the Atlanta Thrashers, moved to Winnipeg.
This stands in direct contrast to the Golden Knights and the franchise’s immediate success. The team came into existence for the 2017–2018 season and has made the playoffs each year since. Not only has Vegas played well, but the front office has also made a conscious effort to improve every season.
It might seem like the Golden Knights got a more competitive team than typical for an expansion team. In fact, with the looming Seattle expansion draft scheduled for July 21st, there is serious conjecture about making sure the Kraken doesn’t get as competitive a team.
Yet, the teams knew the rules well in advance of the draft back in the summer of 2017 like they will for July 21st. Teams can protect either seven forwards, three defensemen and a goaltender, or eight skaters (forwards and defensemen) and a goaltender.
In addition, teams must protect players with no-movement clauses unless they’d waive it for the expansion draft. All first and second-year professionals, including un-signed players are exempt from protection and do not count towards the threshold.
So, with those rules in place, the Golden Knights orchestrated a series of trades that landed building-block players. Whenever someone says Vegas got rules that were too favorable, remind them that the best players on the Golden Knights were the results of trades, not the expansion draft itself.
The Trades
Franchise goaltender
The Pittsburgh Penguins traded Vegas a second-round draft pick so it would select goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury. At the time, Pittsburgh was coming off of back-to-back Stanley Cups with Matt Murray looking like the franchise’s goalie of the future.
At this point, it seemed like Fluery was past his prime but still a solid starter. This gave Vegas a legitimate goaltender out of the gate and allowed Pittsburgh to save some cap space in hopes of maintaining the roster that won two consecutive cups.
Of course, Fleury is a finalist for the Vezina trophy at age 36 in 2021 and Matt Murray is an Ottawa Senator. Ironically, the Penguins’ undoing in round 1 this season was their lack of quality goaltending.
What exactly was Florida doing?
In maybe the worst move of the entire expansion draft, the Florida Panthers gave the Golden Knights two players that are still fixtures in the team’s top six. Florida sent Vegas Reilly Smith as a condition for selecting Jonathan Marchessault in the expansion draft.
Florida made this move to protect forward Alex Petrovic who it left exposed. In addition to protecting Petrovic, who is no longer in the NHL, this served as a means to dump Smith’s contract.
Of course, Marchessault and Smith made up the team’s first line in its first year of existence and are still important contributors to this day. The duo has a combined 17 points through 14 playoff games this season.
The Wild gives a freebie
While I understand why the Minnesota Wild wanted to make sure it held onto Matt Dumba, the cost was steep. Minnesota traded Alex Tuch and a third-round draft choice so Vegas would select forward Erik Haula.
Part of what makes the Golden Knights so dangerous is Tuch’s depth scoring. Even though he only plays third-line minutes, the forward has eight points in 14 post-season games this year. This kind of high-end bottom-six player is extremely valuable to any contender.
Minnesota, a team that struggled scoring if it wasn’t from the first line, could certainly use Tuch’s depth scoring. But, the Wild felt it was more important to keep Dumba, a talented player in his own right. However, the cost might’ve been a bit too steep.
The Ducks pick the wrong defenseman
In the landscape of NHL defenseman, Shea Theodore never really gets his due. I mean, his own team felt he wasn’t good enough to be the number one defenseman on a contender so it signed Alex Pietrangelo to the biggest contract of 2020 free agency.
Despite that, Theodore’s impact is undeniable. He’s amongst the league’s best at driving possession. When Theodore is on the ice, Vegas is creating more total opportunities to score than its opposition and more quality ones as well.
The Ducks traded Theodore to Vegas so it would select defenseman Clayton Stoner instead of Sami Vatanen. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, the Ducks would’ve protected Theodore, who’s clearly a more talented player than Vatanen.
The chart above shows how many standard deviations away from the mean the production of said player is. As someone who had to take introduction to statistics twice in college, I understand the aversion to regression curves. But, it paints a clear picture of how much better than average Theodore is.
To be three standard deviations away from the mean puts Theodore ahead of 99.7 percent of players at goals for per 60 and expected goals per 60. Meaning that when Theodore is on the ice, he’s creating quality scoring chances that are leading to goals.
Columbus Dumps Clarkson
The last trade worth covering is the contract of forward David Clarkson. By the summer of 2017, it was clear that Clarkson would no longer be able to play due to injury. The Blue Jackets originally acquired Clarkson from the Toronto Maple Leafs as a salary dump of their own.
However, by the time of the Vegas expansion draft, Columbus was desperate to clear Clarkson from its ledger. The Blue Jackets paid a steep price in the form of first and second-round picks as well as forward William Karlsson as conditions for selecting Clarkson.
Like Marchessault and Smith, Karlsson is still a staple of the Golden Knights to this day. On Columbus, he had a career 47 points in 165 games while averaging less than 15 minutes per game. On Vegas, he had an opportunity to get heavy minutes.
While Karlsson will likely never replicate his 43 goal season of 2017–2018, he’s a strong second-line player on a contending team. Karlsson’s impact is stronger as a power-play specialist, but he’s able to hold his own at five on five.
To get Karlsson as a throw-in for taking a bad contract that could be stashed on long term injured reserve was a masterstroke in asset management. He’s an elite power-play producer, better than 99.7 percent of players at expected goals and Corsi for per 60.
Lessons going forward
The single most valuable asset the expansion Seattle Kraken have is the full $81.5 million of salary-cap space. There are several teams with perilous financial situations that could look to cut side deals with Seattle. It’ll be on those teams to not get robbed as badly as these teams did in 2017.
In the flat cap environment, Seattle represents a magic eraser for bad contracts. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reported that the salary cap could be flat at $81.5 million for at least another five seasons. Hopefully, that isn’t the case, but if it is, this Seattle expansion represents an opportunity to make space.
Remember, the Kraken has to meet the salary cap floor of $60.2 million so it can’t just take cheap players from other teams. It’ll be in Seattle’s interest to absorb some bad contracts to acquire additional assets. Remember, Vegas selected four players in 2017 that it immediately flipped for more draft picks.
While it’s hard to figure that Anaheim knew how good Theodore was and Columbus Karlsson, they’ll always be framed as teams who missed out on quality players. It’s why giving young players a run to prove themselves is so important.
As for Florida and Minnesota, it’s fair to say those moves looked bad in the moment. Granted, Smith wasn’t performing to his contract and Marchessault was unproven, but giving up that much to protect Petrovic was a maligned move at the time regardless of having the benefit of hindsight.
To say that Vegas got a quality team because the expansion draft rules favored them is revisionist history. It was the other NHL GMs giving away quality players who have fueled the Golden Knights’ early success.
In addition, Vegas is still aggressively improving the roster through trades and free agency. There are just ten players remaining from the original selection of players.
It’s unlikely that Seattle gets lucky enough to get an entire first line and top-pair defensemen in side trades, but these are the same NHL GMs who try to build teams to win the previous year’s Stanley Cup.
