Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
Literally no one thought they were going to make the playoffs, let alone contend, with the players they selected at the expansion draft. If anyone says they did expect it, they are liars.
Even Vegas didn't. The strategy was to put themselves in a position to collect draft picks - hence the number of defensemen selected - and they accomplished that. The only reasons they ended up being good were, first of all, pro scouting (they acquired players that other teams had undervalued and had put in more limited roles) and GMs panicking about losing players and giving up too much to ensure that they could avoid what they thought was a worst case scenario. It wasn't a badly designed process, it was a masterful performance by McPhee and his staff.
This won't happen the same way again. The Seattle draft will no doubt produce a better team than what the old expansion drafts were like (they won't be the 1992 ducks or anything) but the rest of the league has learned its lesson and I suspect there will be much less wheeling and dealing with Francis about who he's selecting. In basically every case you were better off just losing the extra guy you couldn't protect.
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Agreed. The league also didnt want a ####ty franchise for a decade either. But to say they were gifted a great team is false. They picked up players that were third liners or 4th d man and got a few gifts from the likes of Florida that had bad cap management. I don't normally agree with corsi but he is absolutely right every one thought this was a ####ty team and on top of that everyone thought they even screwed up the draft. I do not see how people can hate them for success, think, they took derek Engelland from us great guy but not a world beater, not a gift by any means