George McPhee speaks after being introduced as the general manager of the Las Vegas NHL franchise during a news conference at T-Mobile Arena on July 13, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Getty Images)

Vegas Golden Knights general manager George McPhee understands how the NHL coaching landscape has changed in the past month.

The decisions by the Boston Bruins to fire Claude Julien, the New York Islanders to get rid of Jack Capuano and the St. Louis Blues to cut ties with Ken Hitchcock has made McPhee’s choice on his team’s first bench boss both harder and easier. On the one hand, there is now more quality in the pool of coaches that Vegas could pick.

On the other, the increase in choices means a decision won’t be cut and dry. McPhee said original plan was still to hire a coach in the spring, but called the process “evolving.”

On Wednesday night, Newsday reported Capuano will meet with Vegas this week.

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Said McPhee, “Things can change quickly in this business and needless to say we’re aware of what’s going on out in the marketplace now.”

It’s a busy time for McPhee. Not only is he looking for a coach, he’s also close to the point where he can actually make moves. He just needs the green light from the NHL when owner Bill Foley has fully paid his $500 million entrance fee. McPhee won’t be able to make trades for players currently playing this season, but he can deal for draft choices, unsigned draft picks and make deals that have to do with the expansion draft.

“Well we just feel the sooner the better,” McPhee said. “We’d like to start doing some business. We’re ready to go and it’s important for us to be involved. It’s important for us to be at the table at the GM’s meetings because there are important decisions regarding the league and all of hockey in general are being made there and Las Vegas should be heard.”

We spoke with McPhee about the coaching search, player transactions, the June NHL entry draft and how he’s preparing for the expansion draft.

Q: When a coach gets fired how much does that change your list of candidates? This past month we’ve seen some experienced guys lose their jobs.

McPHEE: Things have changed a great deal in the last month and there are some quality people out there, so it doesn’t make the process any easier. We just are really focused on trying to get it right because it is a key strategic priority for our franchise.

What exactly is your ideal coach?

Several months ago our staff created a short-list of coaches who we thought would be the right fit for the Vegas Golden Knights – that would have the right personality traits and experience to be the right fit short-term and long-term and we indicated then that we could go all the way into the spring before we exhausted the process. It’s an evolving process and things can change quickly in this business and needless to say we’re aware of what’s going on out in the marketplace now, so we’ll continue to look at it and see where it goes, but our preference is to have an experienced NHL coach.

View photos Jack Capuano of the New York Islanders looks on from the bench against the Arizona Coyotes at Gila River Arena on January 7, 2017 in Glendale, Arizona. (Getty Images) More

It seems like there are often new nuggets about the expansion draft rules that comes to light when we ask the league. Is it the same for you? How much contact do you have with the NHL on rule clarification?

It’s still a fluid situation. There are still some things that need to be defined. We had a lot of contact early on when we went through a mock draft and tried to understand the rules as best we could and we had a lot of questions after that and after each run-through since then we’ve had fewer questions and more clarity and we’re just able to focus on players.

How do you try to figure out who will be unprotected? Do you read media clips on other teams? Do you have league sources for this?

We have a full scouting staff that has been, pretty comprehensive in their coverage in trying to learn as much as they can about teams and players. You do everything you can to get some knowledge of what’s going on so I don’t think the process is really that difficult in trying to determine what players might be available. It’s not hard to identify the top players on each team and know who’s going to be protected. There are typically three or four guys on the bubble that are people we have to focus on and that all the GMs around the league will have to make difficult decisions on. Every club is going to lose a player. I think they’ve all accepted that.

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