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Fleury leads Vegas Golden Knights’ expansion draft choices

Nashville Predators forward James Neal, who has scored at least 20 goals in all nine of his National Hockey League seasons, including 40 in 2011-12, highlighted the next eight selections, which also included 35-year-old Calgary Flames defenseman Deryk Engelland, a Las Vegas resident and former member of the Las Vegas Wranglers of the ECHL. Poile is the only GM in Predators history, patiently building the Sun Belt franchise into a powerhouse with a solid foundation in the community.

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The league is expected to reveal the list of players that will be added to the roster of the Golden Knights for the expansion franchise.

Veteran forward James Neal and goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury headlined the expansion draft selections of the Vegas Golden Knights on Wednesday at the NHL Awards.

Gerard Gallant, center, poses for photographers with Bill Foley, left, owner of the Vegas Golden Knights, and George McPhee, Vegas Golden Knights general manager, Thursday, April 13, 2017, in Las Vegas.

Pittsburgh Penguins goalie Marc Andre-Fleury has been drafted by the Vegas Golden Knights.

Nobody got more attention than the 32-year-old Fleury, who lost his starting job during last season’s playoff run with the back-to-back champion Penguins.

Side deals prevented the team from acquiring players such as Eric Staal and Matt Dumba.

Teams had a year to prepare to lose one player in the process, and yet some fared far better than others.

“My skating has come along, and I could always shot the puck”, he said.

“I have nothing but good things to say about Calgary and the organization”, he said. The Vegas NHL roster features a good number of players whose best years are still ahead of them – a very big chunk of their roster is between 24 and 26 years old.

With the obvious caveat that the roster is going to change between now and opening night-and the subcaveat that it’ll be the decent players who are most likely to be traded, making the roster even weaker-that is a bad, bad team. But without even bribing Vegas with anything in exchange, the Golden Knights selected 31-year-old defenseman Alexei Emelin, who the Canadiens might have been down on anyway. He received the loudest ovation at the NHL Awards on Wednesday night when he donned a Golden Knights jersey for a first time, and he appears poised to be the franchise’s face for its start.

Tolvanen is an undersized 18-year-old phenom from Finland with some of the most spectacular offensive skills in the draft class. So it should be no surprise that the Golden Knights would make decisions that might seem questionable at first glance.

Last season, he signed a one-year, two-way contract with Pittsburgh. Talking to people around the rinks, they’re excited about the team.

This comes after the NHL’s newest team made its expansion draft selections during Wednesday’s awards show.

There are two schools of thought when compiling an expansion team. He also picked up two more first-round picks in the entry draft Friday night along with other selections, prospects and National Hockey League players. The entry draft this weekend will presumably make it even clearer what Vegas is trying to do, but for now, you get the sense that at the very least, McPhee has a plan to build a victor in the desert.

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CHICAGO – The Golden Knights were looking for size and strength in the NHL Entry Draft on Saturday at the United Center and found plenty of both. Vegas shipped defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk and a seventh-round pick next year to Carolina for Pittsburghs second-round pick this year, and then traded David Schlemko to Montreal for a fifth-round pick in 2019.

A man pass a United Center entrance with NHL team logos as preparation for the NHL Draft continue Thursday