Like many other teams across the NHL, the Bruins had a rather miserable experience when the league allowed the Vegas Golden Knights to sort through rosters and pluck away NHL talent as part of a new expansion draft.
While Don Sweeney and his staff hoped that Vegas, needing to hit cap obligations, might select players with plenty of money tied up like Matt Beleskey, George McPhee, the Golden Knights went the logical route as they looked to invest in young, promising talent — taking Colin Miller off of Boston’s hands.
It provided to be an advantageous pickup for Vegas, as Miller recorded 41 points over 82 games in 2017-18, averaging 19:21 of ice time while helping the Knights advance all the way to the Stanley Cup Final.
Ultimately, Boston’s depth on the blue line and the emergence of youngsters like Charlie McAvoy, Brandon Carlo and Matt Grzelcyk allowed the B’s to absorb the loss of Miller, but many other teams were much less fortunate.
Florida didn’t protect Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith in the draft, with Vegas snatching up the former and then trading for the latter in exchange for a fourth-round pick. Since then, the duo have combined for 262 points in two-plus years with the Golden Knights.
The Wild traded Alex Tuch to Vegas in order to prevent McPhee from snatching one of Minnesota’s available defensemen in Matt Dumba and Jonas Brodin. In 152 games with the Knights, Tuch has tallied 35 goals and recorded 89 points.
Vegas took Marc-Andre Fleury from the Penguins, who has posted a .920 save percentage through 118 games. William Karlsson went from a cast-off in Columbus to a top-six monster that has tallied 69 goals over 176 games with the Golden Knights.
The Golden Knights made out like bandits back in 2017, and another new NHL franchise is looking to repeat the feat in June 2021 when the Seattle franchise will once again be asked to poach rosters in another expansion draft.
Boston already lost a promising defenseman — albeit one that played sparingly here — during this last draft. But 2021 should be even more painful for what should be a deep B’s roster.
To go over the rules for the Seattle expansion draft:
Seattle will select one player from each team — except for the Golden Knights — for a total of 30 (14 forwards, nine defensemen and three goalies). The team must choose a minimum of 20 players under contract for the 2021-22 regular season and those with an aggregate Expansion Draft value that is between 60-100% of the prior season's upper limit for the salary cap. Seattle also cannot buy out players that it selected in the Expansion Draft earlier than the summer following its first season.
The (unwilling) participants in the Expansion Draft will have two options when it comes to protecting players:
— Protect seven forwards, three defensemen and one goalie.
— Protect eight skaters (forwards/defensemen) and one goalie.
There are conditions when it comes to these player protections, of course.
- All players with no-movement clauses at the time of the draft, and who decline to waive those clauses, must be protected by their teams and will be counted toward their team's applicable protection limits. So, for example, players with NMCs like Patrice Bergeron WILL need to be protected by Boston (as if they weren't going to do it anyway.)
- All first- and second-year NHL players, and all unsigned draft choices, will be exempt from selection (and will not be counted toward protection limits.)
- One defenseman who is a) under contract in 2021-22 and b) played in at least 40 NHL games the prior season or played in at least 70 NHL games in the prior two seasons.
- Two forwards who are a) under contract in 2021-22 and b) played at least 40 NHL games the prior season or played in at least 70 NHL games in the prior two seasons.
- One goalie who is under contract in 2021-22 or will be a restricted free agent at the end of his current contract immediately prior to 2021-22. If a team elects to make a restricted free agent goalie available to meet this requirement, that goalie must have received his qualifying offer prior to the submission of the team's protected list.
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- Good to see Hingham native Brian Boyle land with another team this season. The 34-year-old forward should help bolster the Panthers' bottom-six forward corps. Now, if only Florida can find a solution in net, with Sergei Bobrovsky sporting an .869 save percentage.
- Poor Toronto, amirite?