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The Expansion Draft

BG

Well-known member
June is upon us, along with the Cup Final, the Expansion Draft and the Entry Draft.

June 8, Stanley Cup Game 5

June 11, Stanley Cup Game 6

June 12, Deadline to ask a player to waive a NMC (For Pittsburgh and Nashville, the deadline is the day after the Cup Final)

June 14, Stanley Cup Game 7

June 15, Buy-out window opens

June 16, Waiver deadline at noon

-- Expansion Histeria --

June 17, 3pm: Waiver and trade freeze begins, moratorium on signing new SPCs including a teams own RFA/UFAs
June 17, 5pm: All teams must send their protection lists to the league

June 18, 10am: NHL will distribute approved lists to all NHL teams, UFA/RFA interview period for Vegas opens

June 20, 5pm: Deadline for Las Vegas will make their 30 selections

June 21, 10am: Las Vegas roster will be finalized, announced during the NHL Awards (8pm)

June 22, 8am: Waiver and trade freeze lifted

June 23-24, 2017 NHL Entry Draft in Chicago

There will be a lot of player movement IMO, and hopefully a few teams give us an inside look.
 
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Some interesting scenarios developing out of this

Pens, Ducks, Islanders and Minnesota all have some hard decisions to make in the next few weeks
 
I would have paid money just to watch how McPhee has positioned this expansion team - no doubt he already has an idea of what his team could look like, and has reached out to all of the other GMs in the league. We're also seeing news of teams with expansion players that are looking to extract assets from Vegas in exchange for taking a certain player (they can trade their expansion picks -or- work trade deals around selecting players from other teams).
 
Im looking forward to seeing if anyone tries to take advantage of the Knights FA window to swing a deal on a UFA they want to negotiate with
 
What a crappy draft to have to start a franchise from. I suppose that next season they plan on having a better pick.

That division is going to now have 3 punchbag teams. Gotta like the wild-card chances in that division going forward.
 
I wonder how we're going to handle this expansion draft. Will we be protecting Conor Carrick? Is this a guy that is worth investing more time in his development? Does he help us achieve our goal of being a better defensive team? Is his role easier to get an upgrade on versus the Polak role?

Say Anaheim wants to move Sami Vatanen. He is clearly better than Carrick. I don't know if we would want to ice a lineup of Carrick and Vatanen in the top 6. Although Vatanen gets some praise for being a good all around defender i wouldn't say he'd be able to fill the Polak role of clearing the crease and winning puck battles by moving bodies.

I keep going back and forth on Carrick personally. He just didn't produce enough last season offensively for me to say with any certainty how good he'll be. When it comes to his play defensively well i'd say he's good at moving to puck but not so good when it comes to retrieving the puck. His size is a bit of a concern but he's pretty well built for a shorter guy.

Maybe we end up waiting out the expansion draft and making a move with Vegas for one of the defenseman they pick up. This could be our 4 quarters for a dollar type trade. Vegas might be looking to build up their prospect pool a bit and might want to move a veteran.
 
So the first step of Expansion starts today, with a deadline to ask players to waive for the purposes of buy-outs or availability to be traded in expansion.

Unlikely though that anything will be reported until an actual buy-out (June 15), or trade happens.
 
I think Carrick is the obvious guy to protect barring a trade before the expansion draft. If we are able to acquire a better defenseman I wouldn't lose any sleep over exposing Carrick.

But I also wouldn't worry about protecting Marincin or Marchenko over Carrick.
 
Ya the leafs are crazy well positioned for this draft. I mean they're able to protect Matt Martin...
 
Also wouldn't be shocked, if he turns out to be fit to play, to see vegas take lupul. If he wants to skate again it'd be a great opportunity for him to play for another contract. If you're vegas, it's only a one year commitment, 5.25 helps get them to the floor and if he plays well he'll get them something at the deadline.

Plus lupul and vegas is a match made in heaven.
 
I dunno...Vegas & Lupul are a match made in heaven if you're Lupul.

If you're the team paying him, it's more like a match made in hell.

I also can't really see Vegas just picking him up for free in the expansion draft. I'd think they'd want to extract a return from the Leafs before taking that cap hit off their hands.

My guess for their pick from the Leafs would be either Brendan Leipsic, since he's the best offensively talented forward prospect that'll be available to them, or Eric Fehr, if McPhee remembers him fondly from his days with the Capitals, and wants to have him around as a veteran leaderbean for his club that also eats up some cap space.
 
Bkerr's the one that got it.

First I explained why I don't think Lupul will be Vegas's pick off our roster (unless we trade them something good in return), and then went on to predict what I think will end up happening in the expansion draft---they likely take Leipsic, but there's an outside chance they take Fehr if McPhee loves him from their Washington days.
 
Sounds like Phaneuf is not waiving his NMC. Are they actually worried about losing their almost 5M defenseman who got 0 goals last year?
 
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