Golden Knights GM George McPhee eager to begin making moves
The NHL is about to find out if George McPhee can play poker.
The Golden Knights’ general manager soon will have his hands untied and his $73 million bankroll unwrapped, as owner Bill Foley makes his final payment of the team’s $500 million expansion fee to the NHL. Once the transaction clears, the Knights will be fully operational as the league’s 31st team and will be allowed to make trades and sign players.
The NHL’s trading deadline is March 1. Foley has said he plans to make the final payment before the general manager meetings begin March 6 in Boca Raton, Florida, which McPhee is expected to attend.
“It gives the Vegas Golden Knights a seat at the table,” McPhee said Thursday. “It gives us a say in league matters.”
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly clarified the team’s level of participation last weekend at the All-Star Game in Los Angeles. The Knights will be able to acquire additional draft picks, make deals tied to the June 21 expansion draft and the June 23-24 amateur draft, sign college free agents once their season ends, and junior players age 20 or older who are free agents as well as free agents from Europe.
“(McPhee) can’t acquire players who are still playing in the 2016-17 season,” Daly said. “But he can acquire draft picks, unsigned draft choices … and he can start making deals related to the expansion draft.”
Each of the 30 existing NHL teams must lose one player to the Knights in the expansion draft. But there are deals to be made that would include future draft picks, and that might be more important to McPhee than the players the Knights take in expansion.
“You can’t predict what’s going to happen,” McPhee said. “Those draft picks represent our future, and they are very valuable to us. If we have an offer that makes sense to us and can help us, certainly we’ll look at it. But it’s hard to say how busy we’re going to be in terms of trades.”
Contact Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow @stevecarprj on Twitter.
