It’s time for everybody’s favorite post-All Star tradition, The Athletic’s Seattle challenge, otherwise known as Seattle Mock Draft 3.0.



When we first attempted this exercise just a little over a year ago, we acknowledged it as an impossible task since Seattle’s actual expansion draft was still 30 months away. All we were trying to do was gain familiarity with the formula and posit which, among the successful gambits used by the Vegas Golden Knights in their expansion season, might work for Seattle too.



George McPhee, then the Golden Knights’ general manager, helpfully provided his assistance, noting that mock drafts had a genuine benefit for his team because it enabled them to refine their scouting searches ahead of the real thing.



Seattle was expected to conduct the first of its own mock drafts in January, which would be about nine months sooner than when Vegas started doing theirs. According to McPhee, the Golden Knights then...