Since his leaving the Capitals he has been 'watching a lot of hockey. He knew his own players, but his knowledge of other players in the league slowly degraded.

He mentioned that his best trades were made 'when I knew the players,' but that over time, tied to his GM responsibilities, his ability to really know the players was not as good. His main response was that he was going to scout both, 'every day' but had an interesting follow. The second was from a question about if he was going to scout more the pros (for the Expansion Draft) or the amateurs (for the Entry Draft). His first was an aside comment about being out of the GM chair for awhile which had given him a change to 'recharge.' And a few comments made by McPhee at his introductory news conference resonated with me. McPhee is famous for a lot of things, perhaps most from the 'Fire Sale' of 2003-2004 and infamous for the Filip Forsberg for Martin Erat. They whittled it down to two candidates, and George McPhee got the nod. Word has it that seven candidates were interviewed while Foley, Foley's hockey advisor Murray Craven and a small group of Hockey In Vegas staff huddled in a ranch in Montana. Truth be told my own personal choices at what I thought were the best likely candidates were McPhee and Florida's President of Hockey Operations Dale Talon. Last week when speculation was rampant I added my thoughts on who were the likely candidates for the Las Vegas GM job.

Nhl 2004 rebuilt 2016