3. Take risks in the Expansion Draft
Seattle will have to wait until 2021 to begin the construction of the roster that will take to the ice for the very first time later that year. However, they can start to prepare for that process now and they would be wise to go back in history and study exactly how the Vegas Golden Knights both approached and navigated that whole process back in 2017.
As mentioned already in the previous slide, the Knights struck gold with a plethora of players who, on paper, didn’t exactly light up the NHL prior to being taken by Vegas in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft. William Karlsson is the obvious player on that list and you can also put the likes of Jonathan Marchessault, Shea Theodore and Nate Schmidt in that mix too.
Karlsson had totalled 50 points in his first four years in the NHL with the Anaheim Ducks and the Columbus Blue Jackets, while he had never reached the 10 goal plateau in the majors. However, a change of scenery seemed to do wonders for the center, who tallied 43 goals and 35 assists for 78 points in his first year with Vegas, including an additional 15 points (seven goals, eight assists) in the postseason.
He did endure a slight drop-off last year but still registered 24 goals and 32 assists for 56 points in 82 NHL regular season games, and has now become a key piece of this Vegas team that are bang in the middle of their Stanley Cup window. Shea Theodore enjoyed a career-year in 2018-19 after previously struggling to make his mark in the big leagues with Anaheim, and there are a slew of examples on the Vegas roster of players who were picked in the 2017 Expansion Draft and then went on to resurrect their NHL careers in Sin City.
Seattle will need to get creative when doing their homework for the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft and, the main advantage of naming Ron Francis as the franchise’s first-ever General Manager this early is that he will have plenty of time to scout players and prepare. It is obviously hard to tell at this stage what players will be available in the Expansion Draft with 30 teams (Vegas will be excluded from this process) having to give up one player each.
There are bound to be a few big names available but Francis should really study what Vegas did and look at the results of their hard work. There is concrete proof that scratching beneath the surface and picking players who may not be household names in the NHL can pay dividends, and that should be the model for this Seattle franchise as they begin to prepare, plan and plot for the 2021 Expansion Draft.