What do your Vegas Golden Knights look like?
By Ryan Pike
6 years agoThe protected lists are out and now we vaguely know which players the Vegas Golden Knights will have to choose from between now and Wednesday morning. They’ll have three days to mull over their selections and for the other 30 clubs to beg and plead with them to avoid picking players they want to keep.
In the interim, as we wait, I tried to select my very own Vegas Golden Knights roster.
I went with two overriding principles for my roster:
- Building from the net out and prioritizing goaltenders, then defensemen, then forwards.
- Fielding a competitive team but also accumulating some assets that will have future value.
I’m also completely ignoring the possibility of side deals with teams and just grabbing players that make sense for Vegas long-term.
Goaltenders
- Marc-Andre Fleury (Pittsburgh)
- Antti Raanta (NY Rangers)
- Calvin Pickard (Colorado)
- Malcolm Subban (Boston)
- Garret Sparks (Toronto)
I figure that at least one of the goaltenders can be flipped to another organization for a pick, while Sparks seems like a solid bet to be at least a good minor league goalie.
Defensemen
- Jack Johnson (Columbus)
- Brendan Dillon (San Jose)
- Jason Demers (Florida)
- Josh Manson (Anaheim)
- Matt Dumba (Minnesota)
- Nate Schmidt (Washington)
- Chris Wideman (Ottawa)
- Trevor van Riemsdyk (Chicago)
- Justin Falk (Buffalo)
- Griffin Reinhart (Edmonton)
It’s basically a hodge-podge of second and third pairing defenders – and Reinhart – but having eight decent players for seven spots is a good place to start and it seems likely that the odd man out can probably be flipped to another team rather than lost on waivers.
Forwards
- Cody Eakin (Dallas)
- Mike Cammalleri (New Jersey)
- Jamie McGinn (Arizona)
- Lee Stempniak (Carolina)
- Brock Nelson (NY Islanders)
- Matt Read (Philadelphia)
- Zack Smith (Nashville)
- Riley Sheahan (Detroit)
- Cedric Paquette (Tampa Bay)
- Kyle Clifford (Los Angeles)
- Reid Boucher (Vancouver)
- Dmitri Jaskin (St. Louis)
- Marko Dano (Winnipeg)
- Hunter Shinkaruk (Calgary)
- Jacob da la Rose (Montreal)
Shinkaruk and da la Rose can be put in the minors and both are preferable to some of the other contracts available from their clubs. Otherwise, this seems like a decent team with some good 200-foot players, some speed and some offense.
What does your team look like? Sound off in the comments!
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