Tomorrow is June, and with June comes what will be the most exciting month in Golden Knights history for the first few years at least. June brings the Expansion Draft, the Entry Draft, and all the movement that goes along with it leading up July 1st, when free agency officially opens.

June 21st will be a monumental day in the history of the club, but for those of you who can’t wait until then, the Golden Knights GM has some good news.

I’m hoping we can start (announcing trades) next week. We’re expecting a lot more conversation and a lot more depth to the conversations and I’m hoping that we can start getting a few deals done because I think it’s going to be a lot to ask to do them all within the expansion window. –George McPhee to TSN

The Expansion Draft is 72 hours long, which sounds like a lot of time, until you remember that NHL trades still go through fax machines. That’s probably not true, but the fact is, with this league things do tend to take forever, even when there’s no longer a reason to wait.

McPhee and the 30 other GMs he’s looking to fleece trade with will have to iron out every last detail of each transaction they pull off. That means contracts, salary cap implications, draft picks, expansion rules, paperwork, a much more, and with each one, the league must sign off before it’s complete.

When McPhee says “it’s a lot to ask,” he’s speaking out of experience, basically saying, we need to get as many trades done before those 72 hours so there’s no ticking clock to screw any of them up.

We want to be a real competitive club, we want to be as good as we can, but we also have to be mindful that we would like to be in a surplus situation the next two or three drafts where we have extra picks. Because our best players are going to have to come through the Entry Draft, I don’t think we are going to get our best players through the Expansion Draft. -McPhee

Watching a few other GM interviews with LeBrun, they all tend to agree that Vegas is going to end up with quite the surplus McPhee is looking for. A surplus of picks from a bundle of trades doesn’t only mean excitement before the Expansion Draft. Not just excitement during the Expansion Draft, but every single pick they gain is another round of ammo for McPhee to make the Entry Draft just as much fun.

The waiting is almost over, June 1st is just a day away.