Las Vegas Expansion: What It Means For The St. Louis Blues

It’s official. The NHL is expanding westward. Las Vegas has been awarded a hockey franchise to be the city’s first “big four” pro franchise.

So, what does Las Vegas getting an NHL team mean for your St. Louis Blues? Well, they’re going to be going to Vegas at least twice a year. Ok, I’m out. Have a good day.

What? You want details. Oh, alright.

Well, Vegas got the franchise for the ever so small fee of $500 million dollars. The price was likely set so high because the owner could afford it and it also was sort of a test to see if the market was serious about landing a team.

There hasn’t been much discussion about how that will be divided up. If divided evenly, each team would get roughly $16.5 million. We know that’s not going to happen. The league is going to keep a good chunk of that. I’m basing this on nothing, but I’d say each owner will be lucky to see around $10 million. Maybe I’ll be wrong.

More importantly, how does this all affect rosters. Well, in terms of next year’s entry draft, it’s easier to just post it from TSN than have me explain it.

Basically, unless something weird happens in the lottery – which I’m sure the NHL won’t allow – Vegas is going to be picking top five in the first round and then top three every round after that, baring trades etc.

Now we get to the fun parts.

Got all that? I know I don’t.  Not fully, anyway.

There’s a lot of wordiness and potential loopholes in here. For example, the rules state that players with “no movement” clauses have to be protected. Well, what does that mean for someone like Jay Bouwmeester?

Well most people are assuming Bouwmeester falls into that category of player the Blues would have to protect since he has a “no trade” clause. However, there is a discussion about whether there is a difference between “no movement” vs. “no trade” in terms of these rules.

If there is, and that’s a big if until the NHL spells it out, then Bouwmeester will almost certainly be unprotected. If the no trade falls under the rules as “no movement” then he would count against the Blues three defensemen numbers. The Blues will undoubtedly want to protect Alex Pietrangelo, so they would have to go the three defensemen route because you don’t want Bouwmeester to be your ownly defender protected under the eight skater option in those rules.

So that part of the expansion draft is a bit still up in the air. The way the Blues luck goes, it’s almost certain the Blues will have to protect Bouwmeester, unless they can find a trade partner for his contract.

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Another issue will be the goaltenders. This is a two-part problem for the Blues at the moment. There has been no indication of whether Brian Elliott or Jake Allen will be the goaltender going forward, so the Blues have to make a decision there. The other part of the problem is they don’t have anyone signed for the period specified in the rules.

All of their minor league goaltender (excluding Husso) are RFA’s this summer. Both Elliott and Allen with be UFA’s next summer. So, as of this moment, they don’t have anyone they can plan on protecting or leaving available.

Confused yet? You’re not the only ones.

That shows how wordy these rules are when the people designed to be able to tell the laymen how it all works. As a high school official, it reminds me of those rule books. Let’s do our best to explain every detail by making it so wordy that people don’t know what’s actually going on.

All too early guess how it will shake out

It’s basically impossible to tell who the Blues will protect. If they don’t extend any current players (almost impossible, but for the sake of argument), then they only have five forwards they could even think about protecting under the current rules.

So, we kind of have to fudge around with things to even have a discussion.

The players the Blues would have to be protect if the draft was tomorrow would certainly be Tarasenko, Pietrangelo, Parayko and Edmundson. Robby Fabbri is another name that would clearly be a protected player, though he might fall under the terms of a two-year pro so might not even need to be protected? (According to Timmerman, he won’t have to be protected to not risk losing)

You can pick whichever goaltender you want. I’d pick Allen myself, but that’s an argument for a different day. Unfortunately, Edmundson would go unprotected if Bouwmeester has to be protected, unless he also falls under the two-year pro provision…  (under Timmerman’s assumption that pro includes AHL time, Edmundson would have to protect Edmundson in order to keep him safe)

This is going to be really interesting to see how it shakes out. The new franchise has to choose one player from all 30 teams. They also have to spend 60-100% of their cap space on the players picked up in the expansion draft too.

That means that they must spend close to $50 million, at the very least, on the expansion draft players. The rules are meant to get Vegas up and competing as soon as possible.

That’s fine from the league’s point of view, but when your own team is guaranteed to lose one player it can really alter things. For example, the Blues could very well make a big signing or trade this summer and have to leave them unprotected next summer based on what they do with their current group.

On one hand, the Blues have played things smartly by not backing themselves into a corner with too many long term deals. On the other hand, it has created a lot of uncertainty for their plans after this one season.

Best Case Scenario

These things are almost impossible to pick because you don’t know what this Vegas franchise will value.

From the Blues’ point of view, the best case would be if the no trade clause does not fall under this “no movement” clause portion of the rules. Then, you leave Bouwmeester unprotected and hope that Las Vegas wants his contract to get them well into the safe zone in terms of what they’re going to spend.

Jori Lehtera is also a name that might be left out there if he stays at his current level. Another option is if the Blues re-signed either David Backes or Troy Brouwer. They could leave one of them unprotected if their production dipped enough to make their potential contracts more of an albatross than sensible.

Next: 5 Don't Miss Games for the Blues in 2016-17

While everyone knows this is a business, you also wonder what the mentality of players that go unprotected and stay will be. That’s bound to bruise some egos. In the end, it’s going to be interesting to see how this offseason plays out. Not only for what we can expect from the Blues in 2016-17 but also who might be left unprotected.

We’ll continue to monitor this and come up with ideas as the St. Louis Blues’ roster becomes more set for the future. Let us know what your scenarios are in the comments too.