Thought it might be fun to look back at the expansion draft and see what the Wild might look like if Vegas took another player. My guess is Dumba would not have been exposed if there wasn't a deal in place, since their depth at LHD (Suter/Brodin/Scandella) was greater than RHD (Spurgeon/Dumba). In this scenario, Vegas takes Staal with the intend to flip him for future assets.
I kept Foligno because I figured the Scandella/Pominville for Foligno/Ennis trade still happened. I put Zuccarello on LTIR since they never would have signed him.
Staal is difficult to replace, requiring them to move either Granlund or Coyle to center. I went with Coyle because Granlund was given a chance to be a 1C and finally thrived at RW, so giving Coyle a chance made sense. I think they’d probably still look at trading Neiderreiter to make space for Kunin to play 3rd line RW. Cap space is tight, but trading Neiderreiter helps and they also may have just stuck with Prosser instead of signing Pateryn.
McDavid, Connor
250 000 $)
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