Adam Proteau: If owner spends wisely, Las Vegas' NHL team could be competitive early on The NHL is expanding into Las Vegas for the 2017-18 season, and the league's rules for next summer's expansion draft will give owner Bill Foley and GM George McPhee a fighting chance at building a competitive team right out of the gate.

GMs would rather trade players for picks, prospects or even fill a need rather than expose and possibly loose players for nothing in the expansion draft.
Vegas will end up with a slightly better looking team than any expansion draft team before it.

they will fold like a cheap card table in 5 years

If it was only a matter of spending money, the Leafs (richest team for years) would've at least made a Cup final.

Well...yeah.

Adam Proteau: If owner spends wisely, Las Vegas' NHL team could be competitive early on
The NHL is expanding into Las Vegas for the 2017-18 season, and the league's rules for next summer's expansion draft will give owner Bill Foley and GM George McPhee a fighting chance at building a competitive team right out of the gate.
- Adam Proteau

They are getting way better expansion draft picks then previous teams , I hope they are competitive.

They'll take young, cheap players with controllable years ahead of them and old, high paid vets with 1 year left on their contracts - This will get them to 60% of the cap easily

The young players will fill their future prospect pools, and the veteran contacts will end 1 year later giving Vegas a ton of capspace in the 2018 offseason

They can then use that space to sign prize free agents, or to obtain salary dumps off other teams with draft picks added

If they try to be "competitive" with other teams castoffs, they'll end up mired in medicority for the next decade

I don't care if they give the ranch away, they will not be competitive. If each team only loses one player, what does that give them. Table scraps is what that is

Just curious, I heard Fleury has a NMC, wouldn't that prevent him form being moved?

Depends they may want to build a mediocre team immediately to help build a fan base. But using the expansion draft to target youth makes sense for being very competitive in 3-4 years

Just curious, I heard Fleury has a NMC, wouldn't that prevent him form being moved?
- 13sundin13

He can elect to waive it for purposes of the expansion draft. No guarantee he'd get chosen, but if he's interested in Vegas, he can make it so the Pens can expose him

I never thought of it until now, but how will Vegas build that drafting and development system? Will they have to sign an affiliate deal with an AHL team and hire a bunch of free agent minor leaguers as well?

I can't see Winnipeg not protecting Myers.

They'll probably go and use the 8 skaters + 1 goaltender instead of 7 fowards and 3 defensemen.

Most of their very skilled young guys will not be touched by the draft.

They're in a very good position.

The Jets will protect all of their top 4 guys. We have so many young forwards we can afford to lose an Armia/Lowry/Copp/Dano and not even flinch. But after Buff, Toby, Myers, and Trouba there's a massive drop on the blueline.

http://www.hockeybuzz.com/blog.php?post_id=75455

I think McPhee would be wise to avoid guys like Dustin Brown who are locked into long term deals and instead focus on expiring contracts that he can flip at the deadline for picks and prospects, then focus on acquiring a couple of marquee players via ufa/trade with outgoing personalities and all star calibre skill to promote the game and generate buzz/publicity for the team.

Winning out of the gate would definitely be an idea situation and quite possibly within reach. Probably the best angle to take with this situation would be to pick players who would be very attractive trade bait come Trade Deadline Day. This would give LV an excellent opportunity to start loading up the prospects cupboard. Think about it. They are going to be able to pick players that some teams never wanted to give away in the first place. If they can have a strong first 3/4 of the season then dump a couple for some decent draft picks they will be that much further ahead than most expansion teams