On the Vegas Golden Knights …
Chris Nichols of FanRag Sports: Pierre LeBrun interviewed Golden Knights GM George McPhee for TSN to talk about the drafts and potential trades.
“I’m hoping that we can start doing that next week,” said McPhee. “This week is pretty busy with the amateur draft, but then we’re going to switch our focus to the expansion draft and we’re expecting a lot more conversation and a lot more depth to the conversations.
“I’m hoping that we can start getting a few deals done because I think it’s going to be a lot to ask to do them all within the expansion window.”
Deals will likely involve the Golden Knights getting an asset(s) for not taking a specific player.
LeBrun asks about how hard it will be to find the balance of taking the asset but not potentially the best player. McPhee isn’t sure and is telling teams they just won’t take the pick, they’ll talk about it.
“We want to be a real competitive club. We want to be as good as we can. But we also have to be mindful that we’d like to be in a surplus situation here over the next two or three drafts where we have extra picks because our best players are going to have to come through the entry draft. I don’t think we’re going to get our best players through the expansion draft.”
McPhee later adds that they plan on being “aggressive” with free agents and are hopeful that they can sign some players during the 72 hour window they have to speak with free agents. They won’t know how it will play out with players until they get to the window.
Teams could also approach Vegas about a player on another team that they might be able to get, and then trade them.
“I had another manager come to me today, and we talked for the first time today, saying that he’d like to get to the window and take a look at the players who are out there and then talk to me about a player that we could claim for them because they need a few things.
“So this is going to be quite a process. All roads lead to Rome, I guess, and there’s going to be a lot of different ways to satisfy clubs.”
Full interview on TSN can be found here.