Upon hearing about the death last of week of former Islanders General Manager Bill Torrey at 83, I started to think back to the late spring of 1972, when the franchise was created.
The Isles, along with the Atlanta Flames, selected 21 players in an NHL expansion draft. In its inaugural season, New York set a record for futility by going 12-60-6.
Two years later, the Washington Capitals and the Kansas City Scouts, who would eventually become the New Jersey Devils, were added to the league. After picking through scraps, the Caps broke the Islanders' mark with an even more putrid 8-67-5 record.
The Flames and the Scouts were merely bad in their respective debuts on ice, which is the best that could have been expected given the history of expansion teams in all of professional sports before and since.
Until the Vegas Golden Knights showed up this season and completely incinerated that history.
Vegas deserves immense credit for its run to the Western Conference Finals. It took an extraordinary effort from all levels of management to install a culture on the fly and get 20 relative strangers to mesh with a common buy-in. And then the Golden Knights went out and played the game with speed and grit that far exceeded their expected norms.
Vegas won the Pacific Division by eight points, a cakewalk in today's three-point NHL era. They then won eight of 10 playoff games by a combined 29-17 margin.
The Golden Knights deserve to be here, heading on the road to either Winnipeg or Nashville for Game 1 on Saturday.
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However, let's get one thing straight. Comparing how other expansion teams have fared with the Golden Knights' experience isn't exactly apples-to-apples. It's more like apple fruit roll-up-to-apples.
Meaning the ingredients were crucial in determining these teams' fates.
Torrey probably refluxed when he first gazed upon the pool of players available to draft in 1972.
That's because the rules in those days allowed incumbent teams to protect 15 skaters and two goalies. With fewer teams, each club lost three players in the draft, but as soon as one was selected, it enabled an additional member to be protected from such team's unprotected pool.
Someone like Marc-Andre Fleury, a three-time Stanley Cup champion and two-time All Star with Pittsburgh, wasn't dropping into Torrey's lap. (For the record, Torrey's goalie selections were middling veteran Gerry Desjardins and a rookie from the Kings organization known mostly for his combativeness named Billy Smith.)
Seven of Torrey's 21 expansion draft selections jumped to the rival WHA. Of the remainder, only Smith and Ed Westfall stuck around by the end of year three.
As the league grew, the expansion draft rules were tweaked. Slightly.
In the last NHL expansion in 2000, Minnesota and Columbus faced protected rosters of either 14 skaters (five defensemen, nine forwards) and a goalie, or 10 skaters (three defensemen, seven forwards) and two goalies. Only six of the 28 teams (Nashville and Atlanta Thrashers players were exempt from the draft) went with the latter option.
Seventeen years later, the Golden Knights were treated far more generously. Protected lists were shortened to either 10 skaters (seven forwards, three defensemen) and one goalie, or eight skaters regardless of position and one goalie. First-and-second-year pros were exempt.
That's quite a change.
The protection limits sent certain teams into panic mode in the run-up to last June's draft. For instance, Vegas was able to poach top-4 defenseman Shea Theodore from Anaheim for nothing since the Ducks were reportedly scared that they would lose (current Devil) Sami Vatanen or Josh Manson instead. Other teams gifted the Golden Knights draft pick inventory to steer them away from or toward certain unprotected players. Vegas then used a 2018 fourth-round pick to obtain skilled forward Reilly Smith from Florida. Smith proceeded to record 60 points in 67 games.
The players Vegas drafted of course were going to be of higher quality than usual, even if guys like William Karlsson (43 regular season goals) and Erik Haula (29) never produced at anywhere near these levels. Then again, Jonathan Marchessault (27) and James Neal (25) had. The same goes for defensemen Nate Schmidt, the Golden Knights' ice time leader.
Again, kudos to general manager George McPhee for finding value and coach Gerard Gallant for developing it. The NHL set these rules so that they could bask in expansion cash (reportedly $500 million). The rest of the owners can't cry about it. Seattle is expected to be added with the same terms in time for the 2020-21 season.
However, it's no wonder why Torrey (among others) couldn't get his club going out of the gate like Vegas. That it took the Isles only three seasons to reach the playoffs, when they sent shivers through defending Cup champ Philadelphia by coming back from a 3-0 series deficit to force a seventh game in the semis, was in of itself a tremendous achievement.
Oh, and then Torrey continued building the franchise that would eventually win a professional sports-record 19 consecutive playoff series during a four-year Stanley Cup title run.
Celebrate McPhee and Vegas, but understand that no NHL expansion team even had a chance to set this precedent.
For a FAN's perspective of the Nets, Devils and Jets, follow Steve on Twitter @SteveLichtenst1.
