NHL Expansion Draft Live Thread: Seattle joins the league

It’s time, it’s time, it’s Vader Seattle Kraken time! The league’s 32nd franchise gets off the ground tonight, making their expansion picks from 30 NHL teams as they begin the process to stock their club.

While most of the picks have been spoiled (don’t click here unless you want to see who the Penguins are going to lose, even though you, smart internet reader, probably already know), there’s still some drama.

Several of Seattle’s picks suggest there are side-deals in place for them to receive extra compensation, and that’s where the fun is. These extra deals are how four years ago the Vegas Golden Knights stocked up on key players like Shea Theodore, Alex Tuch, Reilly Smith and a bevy of first and second round picks that enabled them to make future deals down the line to acquire even more talent like Mark Stone and Max Pacioretty.

There’s also some fun and the sense of an exciting fresh start for the league. This is the first even for the NHL being back on ESPN, with this draft coming to you live on TV on the ESPN2 channel. It will be interesting to see what new twist the “world wide leader of sports” puts on hockey, and just what kind of boost that the NHL receives in the bigger sports world at large now that they are on the most major cable provider in America.

So here we go, event starts at 8:00pm eastern, feel free to talk below about how and what Seattle is doing, which teams are getting dinged and which ones are coming out of it OK, and how you’re feeling about the ESPN broadcast coverage.