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          Craig Custance Blog

          Checking in on the college free agent market

          Pittsburgh landed Zach Aston-Reese, but there are a number of other NCAA free agents available for NHL teams to sign. Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images

          Before the start of college free-agent season, there was a perception that Vegas would swoop in and sign every single one of them. As it turned out, it hasn’t played out close to that way.

          The Dallas Stars and Pittsburgh Penguins struck early this week, with Dallas landing St. Lawrence defenseman Gavin Bayreuther and the Penguins grabbing Northeastern’s Zach Aston-Reese.

          So where are the Golden Knights?

          Vegas GM George McPhee believes that agents' attempts to drum up interest in their clients generated a lot of the hype surrounding his team and the college free agents.

          “It’s agent-driven,” McPhee said. “We have a short list of people we’re interested in. It’s not a long list. We’re in a great place with cap space and contract space. It has a lot of value. We’re not just going to throw contracts around to people who may not deserve them. We’re going to offer people contracts because we think they have a legitimate chance to play in the NHL.”

          That’s a small list. The larger list will include the players Vegas invites to camp. Minnesota-Duluth defenseman Neal Pionk, for instance, might decide he wants to stay in college for next season. If that’s the case, he’s a good candidate to attend Vegas camp. And why wouldn’t he? That’s a hard trip to turn down. Vegas is also expected to be a front-runner for his services if he leaves school.

          As we know, the college free-agent market gets a lot of attention and often the results are less than sizzling. The bigger decision facing Vegas is behind the bench, where McPhee is moving closer to making a hire.

          He declined to speculate on candidates, but there’s no shortage of potential hires that would make sense. He got to know Jack Capuano well after working with him with the Islanders. Gerard Gallant may be the best available coach, and veterans Bob Hartley or Ken Hitchcock would be fantastic in helping grow the sport in a new market.

          “We’re going to make sure we’ve done our due diligence,” McPhee said of the coach search. “Maybe [there will be progress] by the end of April.”

          And now, a few from the mailbag:

          #CustanceCorrespondence

          Great question. I love the Sharks as a possible Western Conference champ, but the path there won’t be an easy one.

          When I look at potential first-round matchups, the one I think could give them the most trouble would be a rematch with the St. Louis Blues.

          San Jose is 0-3 against the Blues this season, with St. Louis outscoring the Sharks 11-3. Plus, St. Louis enters these playoffs with zero expectations. There’s no pressure on them, and that’s still a team loaded with talent and playoff experience. That’s definitely not an easy out for San Jose.

          I guess the insinuation here would be that teams without superstars are somehow harder to succeed with, right? I think there’s an art to coaching teams with stars. Mike Sullivan has gotten it right in Pittsburgh. There’s not a better coach at it in the league than the Blackhawks' Joel Quenneville. He’s the perfect coach for that team; he knows just how much freedom to give and take away with that group. They love playing for him.

          The Jack Adams isn’t one of the awards for which I vote, but if I did, I’d lean toward a coach who I believed absolutely maximized his talent on the roster.

          John Tortorella certainly has. So has Mike Babcock and Guy Boucher. That’s where I would start.

          The best example of this was Chris Kreider and the impact he had on the Rangers in 2012 after his season with Boston College. Kreider had five goals in 18 playoff games that spring for the Rangers. He was great.

          I wouldn’t be surprised if a drafted college player such as Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy got a shot to play and contribute in Boston. Based on those who saw him perform at the World Junior Championship, he could play right now in the NHL. He might get his chance.

          The Bruins have a couple of players in Notre Dame’s Anders Bjork and BU’s Jakob Forsbacka-Karlsson capable of making a contribution in the playoffs. That might be one reason GM Don Sweeney was patient at the deadline. They’ve got talent coming in Boston.

          It’s a fair question. A mailbag is when I ask readers to do 90 percent of the work for me.

          I love this stuff. I love when general managers look for any edge to try to improve their teams, and this was definitely an example of a general manager trying to do that. Just a refresher:

          I wrote in Thursday’s blog about how the NHL shot down one team’s attempt to use their expansion protection slots as trade assets to send to another team facing protection issues.

          The case that was made by the team requesting to do this was pretty simple. The league wants to keep everything above board in the expansion draft process. A deal like this would help prevent a scenario where I trade one of my players whom I can’t protect to you, and then you trade him back to me at some point after the expansion draft in return for additional assets. I’ll be curious to see if anyone tries to pull it off.

          After the story published, one NHL exec texted that he agreed that the league would never allow it -- but he liked the thought process.

          “Fun idea,” he said.

          It’s not so fun to Vegas though, because it would further weaken the player list from which they'll pick. Still, there’s going to be a major dispersion of talent after the season, so that list likely will look a lot different from how it does now.

          It’s been a struggle for Martin Hanzal, who has looked lost at times since joining the Wild, which was pointed out by Pierre LeBrun on our weekly podcast. He’s still looking for his first goal with the team, and he’s a minus-2. His average ice time with Minnesota is the lowest of his career, at 15:57, so there’s an adjustment going on here on a lot of levels for a player who has only played with one team his entire career.

          We see this all the time at the deadline. Martin St. Louis famously scored just one goal for the Rangers after being acquired from the Lightning in 2014, but then went on to have a huge impact on New York’s playoff run that spring. It just took a while to get there.

          I’ve talked to players who say they didn’t get comfortable with their new team until the second round of the playoffs. That’s why a lot of GMs like to do these deals much earlier than the deadline, a luxury GM Chuck Fletcher didn’t have. The Carl Hagelin deal with the Penguins last season was a great example of a GM striking early to maximize return.

          Hanzal will get better. He’s too good not to. His value comes in the playoffs, when Bruce Boudreau can send him out against, say, Ryan Johansen's line, allowing the Wild to have an edge elsewhere in the lineup. That’s where his value is highest.

          No. It’s already so hard to repeat that I just can’t see this team raising another Stanley Cup without another strong performance in the playoffs from Kris Letang.

          If you’re bored, go back and watch the Stanley Cup-clinching game in San Jose from last June. After Logan Couture scores for the Sharks, watch the shift turned in by Letang and Sidney Crosby. Letang absolutely willed his way to a Penguins goal. It was such a great example of the determination that helped drive Pittsburgh’s success last spring. I don’t see how they do it again without him playing at that level.

          Regular readers know where I stand on this. The best possible playoff format would be a draft in which the best teams in the league pick their playoff opponents in the first round. Heck, they could do it after every round. It would be riveting television in the lead-up to the playoffs and would give all of us extra story lines.

          Sadly, I can’t imagine a world where this would ever happen.

          I honestly think it’s just a leftover component of the previous system. I believe it was former Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson who pushed for that rule, and it was an attempt to reward teams who won games in a more traditional matter rather than a team that won a bunch of shootout coin tosses. Now that 3-on-3 overtime has emerged, and it’s been one of the best additions to the game in the last decade, you could argue that it’s nearly as gimmicky as the shootout.

          You’re 100 percent correct, though -- the tie-breaker should just be regulation wins. I’m just not sure it’s a high enough priority right now to make a change. It’ll probably take a team missing the playoffs or something like that to rile up a general manager enough to take it on as a cause.