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Maybe the second wasn't to take Fleury but rather incentive to not take someone else. Just because everyone thought Fleury would be their selection from the Pens doesn't mean GMGM didn't tease that he might take someone else... Anyway... good for the Golden Knights. The team. The management. Their fans. ALL OF IT. I love watching other "more deserving" teams and their playoff drought, no Cup, "long suffering" fans crybaby their way through the playoffs and offseason. BOOFREAKINHOO.

Why should expansion teams be ass for years? For a league that's goal for the past several years is parity, it makes perfect sense why they would change the expansion draft rules. You're acting as if they were given a bunch of all-stars. They weren't. They were a bunch of cast-offs. Of course they weren't as bad as players selected in previous expansion drafts, nor should they be. Expansion teams being relevant out of the gate is a good thing for the league. Like I said, Vegas being as good as they have been in their inaugural season is a one-off. You can be guaranteed Seattle won't be half as good under the exact same rules. Like Buppy said, there's a lot of luck that has gone into this amazing run. They were never supposed to be this good, and likely won't be next year...

They are a roster of cast-offs.

3 reasons: Gallant, coaching, and Gallant. Vegas has on paper a great goalie with what almost everyone considered a mediocre to low end team in front of him. But Gallant got them to buy into his system and play a complete, hard-working, non-selfish, team game. The fact that many of these players had their former team "pay" to get rid of them probably left some big chips on shoulders too, and I'm sure they all had a huge desire to prove everyone wrong. Gallant has also publicly stated that he does not reprimand his players for mistakes at all. He simply puts it behind them and moves forward. So I'd say he's running a very non-disciplinary style... a players coach. Which is probably how he got them to buy into his system. His system from what I can tell is a heavy forecheck in the O-zone and a modified trap in the neutral/D-zone. They really dig and try to force turnovers in the O-zone and immedately throw pucks on net once they do get the turnover. It's a fast paced, in your face, offensive style. Then on D they fall back into a trap where they wait for you to make a mistake. As soon as the mistake is made, just like in the o-zone, they pounce and get the puck to the net quickly. Gallant does not slow down the game at all. He's got them working like a machine and it's worked.

http://www.mlive.com/redwings/index.ssf/2018/05/detroit_red_wings_sign_goalten_1.html 24 years old. 6'3" 176 lbs. Real good numbers in the Extraliga and represented Slovakia at the Olympics and WC. Expected to compete for the backups spot but probably headed to GR next season.

Next season will be Mantha’s real test. He’s heard all the criticism and said all the right things he just needs to decide what kind of player he’s going to be. The first 20 games of last season he looked like he was a legit high end offensive guy. If he doesn’t score around 30 goals it will be a disappointment in my eyes. I’ve given up on AA. He looked terrible last season to the point where I don’t think it comes down to useage. Just not a high level hockey IQ. Blaming Blashill for everything wrong with the team is a cop out. He’s well respected around the league, had success elsewhere and has improved each year. I just don’t see the untapped potential in this roster that everyone else is watching. The vets are who they are and the young players are improving

He does this every year? By "this" you mean signs unrestricted free agents? That's literally every team, every year... This was expected. We still need to sign another two or three "depth" goaltenders. Typically teams have 5-6 pro goaltenders under contract (2 NHL, 2 AHL and 1-2 ECHL). We now have Howard, Fulcher and Rybar. Coreau and McCollum are UFA's. Maybe they decide to bring one back to Grand Rapids, but I doubt both come back. Machovsky went back over seas. I see Rybar as his replacement. Like I said, we still need to sign at least another couple goaltenders. I expect to sign a veteran to backup Howard, and maybe Coreau for Grand Rapids. Detroit - Howard / *Bernier Grand Rapids - *Coreau / Rybar Toledo - Fulcher

Penguins deserve some credit for Vegas’ success too. Not that it was a dumb move, I would’ve protected Murray too. But Fleury is playing some of his best hockey for Vegas.

As I´ve already mentioned, he was top 3 goalie of czech Extraliga last year in cup contender team, had excellent numbers. BUT in the other hand, Wings has terrible record recently with czecho-slovakian players. But I believe he´s way better choice than Avs made with Pavel Francouz.

Is better than Babcock? Completely understand and completely disagree. I normally s*** on those who invoke the eyeball test to prove their point, but in this case I'm going for it. I absolutely see a player capable of 60 pts with 30+ of those being goals, and a guy who should flirt with 70 pts in a year or two. I have nothing to base this on other than what I see on the ice. He's a head above Tatar and Nyquist IMO even if the numbers don't reflect that yet. I'm very excited to see what a more mature 25-26 year old Mantha can do.

Good lord. Because he signed a European player to an entry level contract that means he's going to "do the same things he always does"? What does that mean exactly? "do the same things he's always done"? By signing a young Slovak goaltender this leads you to believe he will now sign Stephen Weiss again? Please explain, I'm stumped as to what this tells you... Holland has openly stated he always wants at least 5 goalies under contract in the system. 2 for Detroit, 2 for GR, and 1 for Toledo. Right now he has Howard and Fulcher signed, with Mrazek and Machovsky gone, and McCollum and Coreau as pending UFAs. He essentially has to sign 3 goalies at least this offseason. Maybe he re-signs McCollum and Coreau, maybe not, either way he has replace Machovsky and Mrazek's spot. Rybar sounds like he might be able to replace Mrazek as backup, but can definitely at least hold down the GR starting job. OOOOOOOO a spooky GR back up goalie, I hope Holland's not up to his spooky ways of signing minor league goalies to support our AHL team again. That would scare me. Good signing. His record in Europe is better than Machovsky's was. Low risk, possibly high reward. 2 more goalies at least to go, I hope they're not McCollum or Coreau TBH

You're just pissed no Canadian team made it to the finals.

Fluke. Half the team having career/breakout years. I mostly expect they'll regress next year, and wouldn't be at all surprised if they missed the playoffs. Even if you assume that all the players are really as good as they've performed this season, it's still a flukey amount of luck to have them all suddenly "get it" at the same time. No doubt Gallant is a good coach who well deserves the Adams, and a great deal of credit, but only so much. In fairness to Chaps, many of those deals wouldn't have been made if teams had more protection slots. Take away a few of Schmidt, Miller, Sbisa, Haula, Tuch, Perron, Neal, Karlsson, McNabb, Theodore, or Fluery...hardly a stretch to think Vegas would be drastically worse under the previous expansion format. Florida is the only team that looks particularly bad. Some look bad in hindsight, but were reasonable enough. Giving up a 1st and 2nd to get rid of Clarkson is pretty steep (easy to say when it's not my $15 million), but Karlsson had 18g, 50p in 180+ games. No good reason to think he'd be any major loss, and if he'd had another 8g, 25p season it would look like a decent deal to dump some dead weight and protect Anderson. Haula was nothing special either. Tuch was a good prospect, but not a huge price to protect Dumba. Anaheim was going to lose a good youngish defenseman no matter what, and it could be argued that all of Fowler, Lindholm, Vatanen, and Manson were as good as Theodore this year. Theodore allowed them to get rid of Stoner. Worth it or not is debatable, but with the defense the Ducks have I don't think they'll miss him too much.

Holland wouldn't know a good goalie if one sat on his face. His only accomplishment in that area was getting Ilitch to open his deep pockets to Hasek and Cujo. Look at the crap the Wings have developed at that position with Mrazek, Coreau, and McCollum. And of course, there's Mr. Average himself, Jimmy Howard.

Ovechkin throwing the body big time right now. Gotta love that from anybody but especially team captain.

Typical Holland depth signing. Same thing he does every year...which could be a scary sign.

If the coaching staff wasn't so abysmal with line jumbling and inconsistency, than Mantha would have been paired with Larkin and Athanasiou all season and the three of them would have all been better off for it. This isn't a knock on Z, just that whenever they had those 3 on the same line, it was usually pretty electric.

You're definitely not the only one. I'm notably pretty high on Mantha, but I've heard some people rag on him pretty hard every year since we've drafted him. He's a top 6 winger, that should be capable of scoring 30 goals (55-65 points), and to me, that's well worth $5-6M on a long term contract. People have to remember that this team is in shambles right now. Once we get things turned around, Mantha should be a very reliable goal scorer for this team for many years to come.

Meh, agree to disagree on this one. I'd definitely go max term on Larkin. More years usually means lower cap hit, and we could really get him on a steal of a contract. I'd also go long(er) term on Mantha. Maybe not 6 years, but I'd definitely go longer than 2 years. I'd be okay with $6-6.5M for 7-8 years for Larkin and $5-5.5M for 4-6 years for Mantha. 8 years is the max for the Islanders / Capitals to re-sign Tavares / Carlson, and 7 years is the max for any other team. So I assume Matt Cane is projected both to be re-signed by their current clubs.

Yeah, Florida, Columbus, Minnesota and Anaheim made some of the worst "deals" in the expansion draft. They're the reason Vegas are in the position they're in now, not the new expansion protection format.

Im not even gonna enjoy the film now bc im gonna be nervously scanning the theater trying to figure out who whitelightning91 is. Whitelightning91, ill be the guy in a Konstantinov CCCP jesey (red/blue) and ill be smuggling a bottle of wine in if you change ur mind... perhaps you prefer some actual whitelightning? Got that too, but I kinda wanna remember the film...

The thing about racism (or prejudice in general) is that it will always exist as long as someone FEELS victimized by it. If we are to truly stamp out prejudice of any kind, than we must not only stop tolerating those who display it, but also stop tolerating those who judge the actions of others as something its not. Just assuming you are being discriminated against by others, because they are different than you, is prejudiced in itself. That's what the Social Justice Warriors intentionally ignore and why the problem will never go away until that is also addressed.

I have cursed him with the suck. Now we must trade.