We’re not going to overthink it this time.
That was the prevailing thought from so many NHL front offices in the three years between the Vegas expansion extortion, er, draft, and the one that’s coming next summer for Seattle.
The most common refrain in NHL circles was that teams would keep it as simple as possible this time around. They would lose whichever player they lost in the Seattle expansion draft, but they wouldn’t lose two or three players just to protect one.
Lesson learned, so many have said.
Which from the outset appeared to make this a more daunting task for the Kraken, the expansion cousins in Vegas having put the rest of the NHL through a crash course on the modern-day expansion draft. Part of it was the more favourable rules Vegas received (imagine the 1992-93 Ottawa Senators comparing notes!), but let’s also credit some shrewd thinking and maneuvering by Vegas management.
They had teams over a barrel…
