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Around The League - 2024-25 Regular Season

Sal_Butera said:
What they’re also proving is $650M expansion fee buys you the ability to draft a competitive NHL team - and NHL playoffs have always been / remain all about good goaltending and strong 4-line depth.

Yeah, about that piss poor expansion draft Ron Francis had….
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It was piss poor, especially compared to what Las Vegas did.

What Seattle's doing right now doesn't suddenly negate that fact.
 
Sal_Butera said:
What they’re also proving is $650M expansion fee buys you the ability to draft a competitive NHL team - and NHL playoffs have always been / remain all about good goaltending and strong 4-line depth.

Yeah, about that piss poor expansion draft Ron Francis had….
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what does 1 billion for the Senators get you?
 
Sal_Butera said:
The 4-line depth is driven primarily by the expansion draft & UFA
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And yet, they still did a terrible job in their expansion draft. They did not take full advantage of it and did not do nearly good enough comapred to what Las Vegas did. There were tons of players they picked with that draft that were lost in the following months for nothing. Hello Nathan Bastian, Haydn Fleury, etc.

I don't know how it's even a real conversation. Seattle's success is largely in spite of the bad choices they made during that draft.
 
east coast said:
I miss the days when expansion teams had to work their way up. LOL. Vegas and apparently now Seattle were/are instant contenders. Easier than rebuilding.

Maybe the long suffering teams can instead be allowed to choose that option. Start from scratch.
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The main advantage of the expansion teams is a clean salary situation. Other than that it’s a team of bottom 6 forwards (with a few 2nd liners), bottom 4 defenseman and backup goalies, and they start with picks but no prospects. They start with decent depth on defense but mostly cap space.
 
GGpX said:
And yet, they still did a terrible job in their expansion draft. They did not take full advantage of it and did not do nearly good enough comapred to what Las Vegas did. There were tons of players they picked with that draft that were lost in the following months for nothing. Hello Nathan Bastian, Haydn Fleury, etc.

I don't know how it's even a real conversation. Seattle's success is largely in spite of the bad choices they made during that draft.
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100% agree. However to their credit, they picked players in a certain mold and built an identity out of it. Speed, skill and worth ethic through the lineup, minus few exceptions.
 
GrandWazoo said:
100% agree. However to their credit, they picked players in a certain mold and built an identity out of it. Speed, skill and worth ethic through the lineup, minus few exceptions.
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That they did.

What I found absolutely baffling was, they clearly picked some players (Vitek Vanecek, Kurtis MacDermid) with the intent to trade them away immediately, yet they seemed to have made no effort into using their capspace to take on dreadful contracts in return for picks.

And yeah, they did pick some other players who were always going to be rentals like Mason Appleton, Jeremy Lauzon, Mark Giordano & Colin Blackwell, but the return on those players was generally pretty underwhelming.

Just because some team is having success doesn't mean their shit smell like roses. Best example I can think of: In the height of their dynasty, Chicago traded a first round pick + prospect for Antoine Vermette. Just because Chicago won the Cup that year doesn't mean the trade was good. It was a bad trade then, it's a bad trade now, regardless of the outcome at the end of the year.
 
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