I'm not straw manning. That was the point of my original post. That people kept and keep saying that Vegas was gifted a contender. If you're going to debate me by going after something I said to someone else, try knowing what the original conversation was about.
Obviously GMs had an opportunity to learn from their mistakes from the Vegas expansion draft. My bringing up Seattle's lower level is not dismissing that reality, it's pointing out that the only thing the league handed them was more favorable rules. What Vegas and the rest of the GMs did with those rules after the fact was on them. The league didn't hand the Knights the team they got. The other 30 teams did. No one made Anaheim trade Theodore to Vegas to pick Stoner instead of Vatanen or Montour. No one made Minnesota trade Vegas Tuch to pick Haula instead of Dumba. No one made Florida trade Reilly Smith to convince Vegas to pick Marchessault. No one made Columbus trade Vegas a first rounder to pick William Karlsson.
And, important to my first point, other than Fleury, no one was looking at the picks and trades Vegas made on draft day as though Vegas had just compiled a contender.
Not That HFboards is a collective of the sharpest hockey minds around but if you go through these threads I bet you won't find a single poster complaining that Vegas was on track to be a long time contender. Quite the opposite (and I'll bet you a fair share of them are the same people who have claimed Vegas was gifted a contender) :
Thoughts on them?
Currently "the cleanest team" in the NHL. Yeah, that joke is running dry.
Don't really see them making the playoffs with all of the Pacific teams ahead of them.
How many points do you see them realistically getting? What player will have the most points on the team? What player makes the most impact?
It's fun seeing a new team play, and I really don't think they'll lose in blowout games, but they will certainly lose a lot more than winning. It should be interesting at how long it takes them to build a contending team, because in my opinion they...
As most people on here probably did, I mocked up the Golden Knights roster on TSN before the draft last night. In the end, I was pretty surprised as how good they could be while still staying within the cap and abiding by the expansion draft rules. Here is the team I picked, which abides by all of the rules set out. Players with an asterisk were chosen by the Golden Nights last night:
Forwards
----------
Kruger (CHI)
**Marchessault (FLA)
Bailey (NYI)
Grabner (NYR)
**Neal (NSH)
**Perron (STL)
Anderson (CBJ)
Burmistrov (ARI)
Bennett (NJD)
Boucher (VAN)
**Leipsic (TOR)...
By "worse assets" I am referring to the overall value of the assets in the organization.
Basically is Vegas already ahead of some other teams in terms of talent in the system? To clarify even further if your goal is to win a Cup, which organizations would be behind Vegas?
All factors to be considered from cap space to future draft picks but keep personnel and staff out it, this is purely based on the value of the assets present in the organization.
Maybe this thread is redundant, in which case I apologize and this can be locked.
I didn't see a thread and was wondering what people thought. Which team do you think will do worse this season? Personally I think Colorado had too much bad luck last year, but they'll still be pretty bad this year. I think they'll just beat out Vegas in the standings
And I doubt you'll find many articles proclaiming Vegas was a contender in the making either.
That's my point. A lot of jealous fans love to complain and say Vegas was "gifted a contender" which dismisses all the hard work that went into their success from both that first group of players and management. Yeah the more favorable rules helped. You'd have to be brain dead to argue otherwise. But the league didn't just plop a contending roster in their lap. It was built and planned.
As for not having enough time, the Vegas expansion rules were announced in June of 2016. The expansion draft was held in June 2017. Teams had a full year to make arrangements to solidify their protection lists. Yeah some NTCs and NMCs made that difficult, but I think it's a bit silly to suggest that teams made such boneheaded decisions at the expansion draft had no time to prepare. Florida, in particular, wanted to dump Reilly Smith's cap and were okay with losing Marchessault to do it.
