Expansion draft playing heavy hand in the current NHL offseason

Never mind the fact the NHL expansion draft won’t take place for another yea, it has had an very strong effect on the happenings of the current offseason.

Even before league commissioner Gary Bettman made the official announcement that the NHL will be adding a team in Las Vegas, it appeared that the established 30 teams in the league were making their offseason moves with the impending expansion draft in mind. Heck the new team doesn't even have an official name yet. But as the summer winds down and the 2016-17 campaign nears, teams are making moves to benefit both the upcoming season and the following expansion draft — no matter how complicated that process may be.

Aside from a few big team-building trades at the start of free agency, current NHL franchises have been signing players solely for expansion draft purposes. (This comes on the heels of a trading frenzy in which teams unloaded players to create salary cap room, as well as eliminate possible expansion draft bait). Per the NHL’s expansion draft rules, a certain number of players from each of the existing teams — two forwards, two defenseman and one goalie — have to be exposed for the draft that will form the new Las Vegas team. With that in mind, teams have signed players this offseason with the idea that they will be up for grabs in the expansion draft. The most recent example of this happened with the Canucks, when Vancouver reportedly re-signed third-string goaltender Richard Bachman with the intension of exposing him in the expansion draft next summer.

Of course, it isn’t as easy as hand-picking which players a front office wants to keep or expose. Per the expansion draft rules, exposed players have to either be under contract or a restricted free agent in the new year. However, players with “no move clauses” must be protected. With 50 players in the league having contracts that contain NMCs, the task of choosing which veterans to expose in next June’s draft becomes a lot more complicated. Matt Rybaltowski of Forbes.com explained in an article back in June how this puts some teams in a tough spot:

“The restrictions place GMs such as Stan Bowman of the Blackhawks in a bind, as Chicago could start the season with as many as eight players with NMCs, including (Artem) Anisimov. Already, the cap-strapped Blackhawks were forced to trade physical forward Andrew Shaw on Draft Night to the Canadiens for two second-round picks. Shaw, who has yet to score 40 points in a single NHL season, could set the market with a six-year, $23.9 million contract ($3.9 million per season).”

In addition to all of that, first and second year pros cannot be exposed. Why? Because the goal is to make new Las Vegas team a competitive entity right from the get-go, and not a team made up solely of AHL-caliber players that the other teams didn’t want. Steve Carp of the Las Vegas Review-Journal touched on this just ahead of the opening of the free agent market:

… the reality is, every team is going to lose a good player to Las Vegas in a year in the expansion draft. That player will depend on whom is calling the shots for the Las Vegas team. 

“Given the (expansion draft) rules, Las Vegas will be able to put a good team on the ice,” Florida Panthers president Dale Tallon said. “It’s been a long time since we expanded, and the way the game is played now and the way it’s coached, there’s a lot of great athletes out there. 

“Obviously, you have to put the right pieces together. But certainly the opportunity is going to be there for Vegas to be competitive right away.” 

Craig Button, the former Calgary Flames general manager who now is an analyst for TSN in Canada, said the talent will be there for Las Vegas to be competitive. 

“Will they be Stanley Cup competitive the first year? No,” Button said. “But with the pool of players they’ll have to choose from, Las Vegas has the chance to have solid footing coming out of the gate.”

And with that anticipation that the new Las Vegas franchise will be competitive from Day 1, teams already in the league are readying for the expansion draft,even though it is still about a year away.