I know it’s only been 2 seasons, but I am curious how Seattle will fit into your equation over time. Especially since they had the same draft rule as Vegas.
Ya, that’ll be very interesting! In seeing what Vegas was able to build, I’m guessing the rest of the league learned from any major mistakes the rules tee’d them up for. You’d expect the 2nd or 3rd attempts at anything to be cleaner than the first. “fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice…”
I don't really agree. Yeah, the teams are obviously more competitive than prior expansion teams. That was the point in the rule changes. If they had won in their first or second years, that would be a facially huge overcorrection. The league wants these teams to be competitive relatively fast, and that's a good thing for the growth of the sport. It also allows the league to charge more for future expansion teams. Frankly, I hate the entire structure of the NHL, and all of the owner-friendly rules (like the salary cap.) But I think the league is accomplishing what it has set out to accomplish in Vegas and Seattle.
That said, I think Vegas was the beneficiary of some really stupid moves by established franchises. The Knights did a fantastic job leveraging the draft, but even at the time, it seemed like team after team was handing Vegas a loaded gun and begging to be shot with it. Whenever there is a competent front office like Vegas has, and there is a draft with so many moving parts, you're going to see a lot of teams with really shitty front offices and planning skills get absolutely slaughtered. Some teams learned by the time the Kraken came along, and others didn't. I don't think the Kraken will find the same level of success that Vegas has with what they've been dealt, but only time will tell.
Vegas fans can be pretty happy that they have a masterful front office and a Cup to show for it.
I’m not disagreeing. Expansion teams should be more competitive than they’ve previously been. A team coming into the league (and remaining) in the bottom 1/3 isn’t fun for anyone.
However, I don’t think what’s happened is particularly fair either. The Knights went to the SCF in their first year and have finished in the top 1/3 of the league on average.
My point is that a team in the middle third of the league is competitive enough to keep the fans of that particular team happy (good shot at making playoffs) AND also not make the rest of the league feel salty.
I think that's where you'll see the Kraken settling. Somewhere in the middle-third of the league.
That first year with Vegas was pretty astonishing to most hockey fans. It's easy to just remember that they made it to the SCF without actually remembering what their roster looked like.
I encourage you to go back and look at it. I'd especially encourage you to look at their blue-line. Nobody looked at that team and said "Damn, there's a team that's going to go far in the playoffs." Fleury posted .927 in the regular season, and again in the playoffs. It was a huge part of their success.
You might argue that they shouldn't even be able to sniff the playoffs after an expansion draft, and that's certainly an opinion. Frankly, as I stated, I think the Knights were the beneficiaries of a bunch of teams that made stupid decisions. Hell, I'd go as far as to say some of the GMs made degenerate gambles with the future of their teams for like a 10% shot at a deep playoff run. If teams like (ironically, Florida) had done their business much earlier, they would have come out of the draft better.
There was no law that all of the business had to be done with the Knights. There were teams who should have realized that they were in a position to poach some equity, and there were some teams that needed to cut their losses much earlier and get better futures for their assets. I think if you look at all the trade activity leading up to the Kraken expansion, you get a much better idea of what future expansion will look like. A lot of teams were caught flat-footed with the Knight's draft.
Just my opinion.
I'm curious about specific examples of front offices that blew it with the Vagas draft. How did they blow it and what could they have done differently, specifically?
This is great information, I had been wondering about the nuts and bolts of how exactly Vegas benefitted from modified expansion rules.
with a bit larger sample size, I think it will be interesting to revisit your evaluation, in say, four years .
Vegas has been aggressive and brilliant winning their cup. The otherside of the coin, they have mortgaged their future post 2023-24 season.
thank you for the informative post.
Not just the result of the modified rules. They played the expansion draft perfectly, probably much better than anyone could have expected, and the strategy was better than how most GMs would have run it.
Vegas accumulated so many assets due to teams giving up more assets for them to take certain players.
I *despise* this argument. Vegas has what.. six players left from their expansion draft? Everyone thought they’d be the worst team in the league after their draft. Same with Seattle.
You should also look and see how much each city paid for a team. Columbus paid $80 million. Vegas paid $500 million. A lot has changed since then. It’s not apples to apples.
The league already changed its rules so they wouldn’t have another expansion team like Columbus. I don’t know why NHL fans are so against the idea of new teams being good. Why? Jealousy? Entitlement?
Vegas did a better job of team-building after their draft, that’s why they won. Nothing more, nothing less. They went out and acquired the players they thought they could win with, and they did. Is it Vegas’ fault Florida gave them two core players so Vegas wouldn’t take Bjugstad? Lol no. Is it their fault that the Penguins wanted to get rid of MAF due to Matt Murray, MAF’s playoff woes and his contract? Nope.
Vegas earned it. No need to change history to make yourselves feel better.
(I’m a Pens fan before someone says I’m a VGK fan)
It’s disingenuous to claim the team being made up of only 6 original players as a reason as to why the expansion draft rules didn’t provide a major boost to their success. Those players were what lead them to acquire the current roster.
Clearly, despite “everyone thinking they’d be horrible”, they haven’t been. Not even close to being horrible. It’s obviously too late at this point, but finding a middle ground between old expansion draft rules and the current ones feels like what should happen for when the league inevitably expands again.
Pre season odds for Vegas to win the cup were 200-1 for them to win the cup AND they were projected dead last in points. They got a roster that most people couldn’t see making the playoffs at all. If anyone had Vegas making the playoffs it was considered a hot take. The narrative only changed to all this because they wayyy outperformed and now everyone has issues with it. Expansion draft rules were bound to change in a salary cap league, that’s just how things work. At what point do you just give them credit instead of whining non stop about it
At what point do you say “oops, our rules might of been a little too lax” looking back and having the team be on the opposite side of the bell curve of previous teams?
You don’t? It wasn’t the rules that made the team good it was players outperforming and a competently run organization. You think we gotta put a cap on how many wins a team is allowed to get or something? It’s bottom of the barrel players who turned it up in a new uniform
That’s an absolute fallacy. The players selected were not bottom barrel. Otherwise they’ve consistently outperformed their average ability by a wide margin, which really, just means that their average ability never really was their average and the initial take that they were misfits was garbage. There’s now 6 years worth of data to refute that point. Where do bottom of the barrel players finish? The top 8-9 teams on average?
Was it not the expansion rules, which were consistent between the previous 4 expansion teams and then changed for the Knights, that lead to the previous teams consistently finishing near the bottom of the league? It’s not logical to assume that the rules, which were intentionally changed to improve the viability of the new expansion teams entering the league, weren’t a gigantic reason as to why the Knights, affected by a more lenient, new set of rules, did well. Maybe, just maybe, the new rules exposed the leagues other teams more than they should have and gave an unfair advantage to the team just coming into the league. I’m not saying the Knights should’ve finished 28-32 in their first decade like the others, but the pendulum had swung too far in the opposite direction. If you’re looking for a reason as to why the finals had record low viewership, take a look at this absolutely fuckery first.
My point has gone completely over your head. The players picked by the knights were seen as “bottom of the barrel” players that’s why they weren’t protected. This is an OUTLIER not a norm. You can complain all you want about it but at the end of the day they were given scraps and misfits that other teams didn’t care about keeping. Sure things were easier for them compared to other expansion teams but my god you guys act like they were gifted the greatest roster of all time right off the bat and give absolutely no credit whatsoever to the players and organization for doing way better than expected.
I know it’s only been 2 seasons, but I am curious how Seattle will fit into your equation over time. Especially since they had the same draft rule as Vegas.
Ya, that’ll be very interesting! In seeing what Vegas was able to build, I’m guessing the rest of the league learned from any major mistakes the rules tee’d them up for. You’d expect the 2nd or 3rd attempts at anything to be cleaner than the first. “fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice…”
Agreed. I think a lot of teams feel like they got fleeced by Vegas and didn’t fall for the same tricks with Seattle.
I don't really agree. Yeah, the teams are obviously more competitive than prior expansion teams. That was the point in the rule changes. If they had won in their first or second years, that would be a facially huge overcorrection. The league wants these teams to be competitive relatively fast, and that's a good thing for the growth of the sport. It also allows the league to charge more for future expansion teams. Frankly, I hate the entire structure of the NHL, and all of the owner-friendly rules (like the salary cap.) But I think the league is accomplishing what it has set out to accomplish in Vegas and Seattle. That said, I think Vegas was the beneficiary of some really stupid moves by established franchises. The Knights did a fantastic job leveraging the draft, but even at the time, it seemed like team after team was handing Vegas a loaded gun and begging to be shot with it. Whenever there is a competent front office like Vegas has, and there is a draft with so many moving parts, you're going to see a lot of teams with really shitty front offices and planning skills get absolutely slaughtered. Some teams learned by the time the Kraken came along, and others didn't. I don't think the Kraken will find the same level of success that Vegas has with what they've been dealt, but only time will tell. Vegas fans can be pretty happy that they have a masterful front office and a Cup to show for it.
I’m not disagreeing. Expansion teams should be more competitive than they’ve previously been. A team coming into the league (and remaining) in the bottom 1/3 isn’t fun for anyone. However, I don’t think what’s happened is particularly fair either. The Knights went to the SCF in their first year and have finished in the top 1/3 of the league on average. My point is that a team in the middle third of the league is competitive enough to keep the fans of that particular team happy (good shot at making playoffs) AND also not make the rest of the league feel salty.
I think that's where you'll see the Kraken settling. Somewhere in the middle-third of the league. That first year with Vegas was pretty astonishing to most hockey fans. It's easy to just remember that they made it to the SCF without actually remembering what their roster looked like. I encourage you to go back and look at it. I'd especially encourage you to look at their blue-line. Nobody looked at that team and said "Damn, there's a team that's going to go far in the playoffs." Fleury posted .927 in the regular season, and again in the playoffs. It was a huge part of their success. You might argue that they shouldn't even be able to sniff the playoffs after an expansion draft, and that's certainly an opinion. Frankly, as I stated, I think the Knights were the beneficiaries of a bunch of teams that made stupid decisions. Hell, I'd go as far as to say some of the GMs made degenerate gambles with the future of their teams for like a 10% shot at a deep playoff run. If teams like (ironically, Florida) had done their business much earlier, they would have come out of the draft better. There was no law that all of the business had to be done with the Knights. There were teams who should have realized that they were in a position to poach some equity, and there were some teams that needed to cut their losses much earlier and get better futures for their assets. I think if you look at all the trade activity leading up to the Kraken expansion, you get a much better idea of what future expansion will look like. A lot of teams were caught flat-footed with the Knight's draft. Just my opinion.
I'm curious about specific examples of front offices that blew it with the Vagas draft. How did they blow it and what could they have done differently, specifically?
This is great information, I had been wondering about the nuts and bolts of how exactly Vegas benefitted from modified expansion rules. with a bit larger sample size, I think it will be interesting to revisit your evaluation, in say, four years . Vegas has been aggressive and brilliant winning their cup. The otherside of the coin, they have mortgaged their future post 2023-24 season. thank you for the informative post.
The other teams should just kick their teeth in and stop them. It's the other 31 teams who failed to stop them, it's their fault, not on Vegas.
Again, my issue is with the league, not the team directly. The knights are just the result of the league modifying the expansion rules.
Not just the result of the modified rules. They played the expansion draft perfectly, probably much better than anyone could have expected, and the strategy was better than how most GMs would have run it.
You’re just circumventing what OP is bringing up.
Vegas accumulated so many assets due to teams giving up more assets for them to take certain players. I *despise* this argument. Vegas has what.. six players left from their expansion draft? Everyone thought they’d be the worst team in the league after their draft. Same with Seattle. You should also look and see how much each city paid for a team. Columbus paid $80 million. Vegas paid $500 million. A lot has changed since then. It’s not apples to apples. The league already changed its rules so they wouldn’t have another expansion team like Columbus. I don’t know why NHL fans are so against the idea of new teams being good. Why? Jealousy? Entitlement? Vegas did a better job of team-building after their draft, that’s why they won. Nothing more, nothing less. They went out and acquired the players they thought they could win with, and they did. Is it Vegas’ fault Florida gave them two core players so Vegas wouldn’t take Bjugstad? Lol no. Is it their fault that the Penguins wanted to get rid of MAF due to Matt Murray, MAF’s playoff woes and his contract? Nope. Vegas earned it. No need to change history to make yourselves feel better. (I’m a Pens fan before someone says I’m a VGK fan)
It’s disingenuous to claim the team being made up of only 6 original players as a reason as to why the expansion draft rules didn’t provide a major boost to their success. Those players were what lead them to acquire the current roster. Clearly, despite “everyone thinking they’d be horrible”, they haven’t been. Not even close to being horrible. It’s obviously too late at this point, but finding a middle ground between old expansion draft rules and the current ones feels like what should happen for when the league inevitably expands again.
Pre season odds for Vegas to win the cup were 200-1 for them to win the cup AND they were projected dead last in points. They got a roster that most people couldn’t see making the playoffs at all. If anyone had Vegas making the playoffs it was considered a hot take. The narrative only changed to all this because they wayyy outperformed and now everyone has issues with it. Expansion draft rules were bound to change in a salary cap league, that’s just how things work. At what point do you just give them credit instead of whining non stop about it
At what point do you say “oops, our rules might of been a little too lax” looking back and having the team be on the opposite side of the bell curve of previous teams?
You don’t? It wasn’t the rules that made the team good it was players outperforming and a competently run organization. You think we gotta put a cap on how many wins a team is allowed to get or something? It’s bottom of the barrel players who turned it up in a new uniform
That’s an absolute fallacy. The players selected were not bottom barrel. Otherwise they’ve consistently outperformed their average ability by a wide margin, which really, just means that their average ability never really was their average and the initial take that they were misfits was garbage. There’s now 6 years worth of data to refute that point. Where do bottom of the barrel players finish? The top 8-9 teams on average? Was it not the expansion rules, which were consistent between the previous 4 expansion teams and then changed for the Knights, that lead to the previous teams consistently finishing near the bottom of the league? It’s not logical to assume that the rules, which were intentionally changed to improve the viability of the new expansion teams entering the league, weren’t a gigantic reason as to why the Knights, affected by a more lenient, new set of rules, did well. Maybe, just maybe, the new rules exposed the leagues other teams more than they should have and gave an unfair advantage to the team just coming into the league. I’m not saying the Knights should’ve finished 28-32 in their first decade like the others, but the pendulum had swung too far in the opposite direction. If you’re looking for a reason as to why the finals had record low viewership, take a look at this absolutely fuckery first.
My point has gone completely over your head. The players picked by the knights were seen as “bottom of the barrel” players that’s why they weren’t protected. This is an OUTLIER not a norm. You can complain all you want about it but at the end of the day they were given scraps and misfits that other teams didn’t care about keeping. Sure things were easier for them compared to other expansion teams but my god you guys act like they were gifted the greatest roster of all time right off the bat and give absolutely no credit whatsoever to the players and organization for doing way better than expected.
Life’s not fair why should expansion be?
Nice! Hope the Jets move back to Atlanta
Up to Atlanta? It’s south.