In 2017, the NHL was expanding from 30 to 31 teams with the addition of the Las Vegas Golden Knights. It was the NHL's first expansion since 2000 when the Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild entered the league.
With an expansion franchise, comes an expansion draft and one player being plucked from every roster in the league.
Minnesota lost two.
In the 2000 expansion draft, the 28 NHL teams were allowed to protect nine forwards, five defencemen and one goalie or two goalies, three defensemen and seven forwards. But in this expansion draft, teams were only allowed to protect seven forwards, three defencemen and one goaltender or one goaltender and eight skaters regardless of position.
Teams had to expose at least two forwards and one defenceman that had played at least 40 games in 2016-17 or more than 70 games in 2015-16 and 2016-17 combined. Teams were also required to protect players with No Move Clauses in their contracts.
The Wild were in a tough spot. It had to protect Jason Pominville (who had a NMC). One of the players that was left unprotected was Eric Stall (who scored 42 goals for the Wild in 2017-18). The Wild also had an outstanding core of young talent (Matt Dumba, Charlie Coyle, Jonas Brodin, Mikael Granlund and Las Vegas native Jason Zucker)
After months of speculation, the Wild protected Pominville, Brodin, Coyle, Zucker, Granlund, Mikko Koivu, Zach Parise, Ryan Suter, Devan Dubnyk, and Nino Niederreiter.
Jason Pominville scored 30 goals in his first full
season with the Wild, but only 42 in his next 235 games
This left players like Dumba, Eric Staal, Marco Scandella, Darcy Kuemper and Erik Haula exposed.
Wild fans were nervous that Dumba would be the one selected. Dumba was a first round pick by the Wild in 2012 and was regarded as one of the best young defensemen in the game. George McPhee was willing to pass over Dumba for a forward as long as they got a prospect in return.
Matt Dumba stayed in Minnesota on Expansion
Draft Night
The player McPhee liked was Haula, who had spent most of the previous season on Minnesota's fourth line. Haula, a 7th round pick in the 2009 Draft out of the University of Minnesota, was coming off a season in which he scored a career-high 15 goals for the Wild, while averaging just under 14 minutes a game.
While McPhee was concentrating on building a franchise, Wild GM Chuck Fletcher was trying to protect his. He knew that, logically, one of his young defensemen would likely be taken. But he wanted to try and trade one of them for some forward help, while trying to clear some salary cap space.
Fletcher accomplished each of those things. After Las Vegas eventually passed on a Wild defenseman, Fletcher traded Marco Scandella and Jason Pominville (and his salary) to Buffalo for forwards Marcus Foligno and Tyler Ennis (both of whom were protected by the Sabres).
For Vegas, the one piece left in the puzzle was the prospect the Wild would send them to not take Dumba or Scandella. Three names were at the top of their list: Jordan Greenway, Kirill Kaprizov and Alex Tuch.
Minnesota send 2014 first round pick Tuch to complete the deal.
Tuch appeared in six games for MIN with a +/- of -3
Tuch played in his first full NHL season for the Golden Knights and scored 15 goals. Haula went on to score 29 in 76 games, nearly doubling his 2016-17 total. It's worth noting Foligno and Ennis combined for 16.
Chuck Fletcher got inside his own head on this one. Not only did he give up two players to protect one, but he didn't realize what he had in Eric Haula. Why wasn't Haula putting up near-30 goal seasons with the Wild? The previous season, Fletcher decided he had to trade three draft picks (including a first) for Martin Hanzel and Ryan White. Then Bruce Boudreau gave Hanzel more ice time than Haula.
The Wild had Haula and wasted him, then willingly gave him away plya another pretty good forward to boot.
To put more salt in the wound: Haula, Tuch and the Las Vegas Knights became the first expansion team to win their division and reach the Stanley Cup Finals.
The Wild's postseason struggles continued as they lost in the first round of the playoffs for the third consecutive year.
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