Uncertainty is the order of the day surrounding this summer’s NHL expansion to Las Vegas. There hasn’t been expansion in the salary-cap era, and there will certainly be wheeling and dealing—not only between the new Vegas Golden Knights and the league’s 30 other teams but also between those 30 clubs as each tries to protect its most valuable players.
For all that ambiguity, one thing does seem clear: Vegas is going to be bad. The team should embrace that reality from the start.
We looked at the players likely to be lost to expansion back in September, and even before taking pre-draft trades are taken into account, the Golden Knights are looking at some awfully slim pickings. Toss in a Marc-Andre Fleury trade here or an Alex Killorn deal there, and the list of candidates gets worse in a hurry.
The rules are a little more favourable to Vegas than they were to the teams in the last wave of NHL expansion, but those teams were so bad that a tweak to the rulebook just isn't going to matter.
The Minnesota Wild went on one early run in their third year of existence but would need a d ...
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Article written by Jonathan Willis
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December 16th, 2016 by Jonathan Willis Leave a reply »
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