Red Wings GM Candidates: Vaughn Karpan
Taking a close look at potential candidates
Previous articles:
Carolina Assistant GM Tyler Dellow
Buffalo VP of Hockey Strategy & Research Sam Ventura
Dallas Assistant GM Scott White
Like my preview for Sam Ventura, I’m going to lay my cards out at the drop: I don’t view Karpan as a strong candidate for the GM spot. However there are rumors circulating across the internet that Vaughn Karpan is going to be hired by Detroit, so I’m trying to make sense of how he’d fit into an organization where the one tangible fact that has been reported is that Chris Ilitch wants to go with a replacement for Steve Yzerman who will use analytics and data analysis to drive decision making.
Karpan has a very long track record, having spent the past 32 years in the NHL, first as a scout before eventually being elevated to Director of Player Personnel with Vegas before becoming an assistant general manager at the ripe old age of 63.
So on the one hand, Vaughn is a very well known entity with a long career in the NHL; on the other, he’d be taking on a monumental task of turning around the Red Wings at an age when many consider retirement.
To say the least, I’m skeptical. With that being said, let’s take a closer look at Vaughn Karpan.
Vaughn Karpan’s Background
Karpan is a true hockey lifer, having spent the past 33 years in the sport following a short amateur career that saw him play for Team Canada from 1985 through 1988.
Like Scott White, he started off in coaching, but after one season as an assistant coach with the Surrey Eagles, he made a permanent move to the NHL, serving as an amateur scout for the Winnipeg Jets 1.0. He made the move with Winnipeg to the southwest, eventually being elevated to the position of Director of Amateur Scouting for the Coyotes.
Following his 13 years with the Coyotes, Karpan was hired by the Canadiens, returning to the role of an amateur scout. Following 5 years as an amateur scout for Les Habs, the Canadiens moved Karpan over the pro scouting side of the house, where he eventually served one year as Director of Professional Scouting.
Pro scouting is where he’s had his biggest impact in the NHL. More on this later.
In 2016 Karpan moved back to the southwest, this time as Director of Player Personnel for the Vegas Golden Knights. He served that role until 2024, when he was elevated to the role of assistant GM.
Add it all up, and Karpan has pretty much checked off all the boxes you’d like to have checked off with a candidate who would be tasked with running a hockey operations department. Personally, I would have liked to see him be elevated to assistant GM sooner than was the case — more on this later — but I’m not going to be too critical here with rumors suggesting he’s a leading candidate.
Vaughan Karpan’s Track Record
With Karpan, I will begin by focusing heavily on his draft record given his long history as an amateur scout. From there we’ll take a look at his work with the Golden Knights where he was tasked with player personnel, with an obvious emphasis on pro scouting.
Let’s begin by breaking up his years with the Jets and Coyotes into two groups.
Winnipeg Jets / Phoenix Coyotes: 1992 - 1998
During his early years in an NHL front office, Karpan was an amateur scout. For the first few drafts when he worked for the club, the franchise hit with draft picks out of Russia — Boris Mironov and Nikolai Khabibulin in 1992 — and what was then Czechoslovakia — Michal Grosek in 1993.
The first minor success for the North American scouting team took place in 1994 when they took Deron Quint with the 30th overall pick. He went on to play in 463 NHL games.
The North American scouting department eventually hit the jackpot in 1995 and 1996 when they drafted Shane Doan and Daniel Briere in back to back draft classes. They also added Brad Isbister and Trevor Letowski from these draft classes for good measure. Both classes were unambiguous successes.
Unfortunately they weren’t able to build off those draft classes, with the 1997 and 1998 draft classes only adding Ossi Vaananen, who played 479 career games in the NHL. After that 1998 draft class, Vaughn Karpan was elevated to Assistant Director Amateur Scouting before being elevated to the director role in 2001.
Let’s take a look at his draft classes when he was part of the team tasked with making those picks on draft day.
Phoenix Coyotes / Arizona Coyotes: 1999 - 2004
To keep things short and sweet, Karpan’s draft classes when he was overseeing amateur scouting were largely underwhelming. The first two draft classes in 1999 and 2000 returned absolutely nothing of note. 2001 netted Frederik Sjöström who played 489 NHL games and the following 2022 draft class included Ben Eager who played in 407 NHL contests.
Karpan’s final draft class was his best as amateur scouting director, as he selected Blake Wheeler and Daniel Winnik.
While Wheeler had a fantastic career, getting absolutely nothing out of 60% of your draft classes when you are overseeing amateur scouting is bad. The fact he moved to Montreal and was demoted to once again being an amateur scout indicates he wasn’t viewed as a riser within NHL front offices.
At this point when he moved to the Canadiens, he was 45 years old, which is the age when most successful GMs get their first gig as an Assistant General Manager. Let’s take a quick look at when many successful GMs were first elevated to the role of Assistant GM.
Doug Armstrong: 28
Dean Lombardi: 30
Ken Holland: 39
George McPhee: 39
Jim Nill: 40
Don Sweeney: 43
Jim Rutherford: 45
Lou Lamoriello: never an AGM, he became GM at 45
Bill Zito: 49
This is perhaps my biggest concern with Karpan: he may be a true outlier as a late bloomer who found his best role later on in his career as a pro scout, but I’d prefer Chris Ilitch not stake his franchise’s future success on an outlier. I’d much prefer to hire a guy who was promoted to an AGM role in his mid 40s, if not earlier. There’s a lot of data that suggests these are the candidates who will have future success as general managers.
With that out of the way, let’s take a quick pit stop to review his draft classes in Montreal.
Montréal Canadiens: 2005 - 2009
Les Habs’ draft class in 2007 was one for the ages, with Montréal adding Ryan McDonagh, Max Pacioretty, and PK Subban to their prospect pool. The Habs traded McDonagh for the rusted out remnants of Scott Gomez, but made out like bandits when they traded Pacioretty to the Golden Knights for a young center prospect named Nick Suzuki.
Montréal drafted their franchise goalie in the previous 2006 draft when they selected Carey Price, but the other three draft classes returned nothing.
Big picture, Karpan was part of some scouting groups that had a few big hits in both Winnipeg/Phoenix/Arizona and Montréal, but the fact he was moved over to the pro scouting group indicates yet again that he wasn’t viewed as an essential piece of an amateur scouting group. If he was, he likely would have been promoted rather than receive a lateral move to the pro scouting side of the front office.
Finally, let’s take a look at his run with the Vegas Golden Knights, where Karpan looks to have finally found his true calling.
Vegas Golden Knights: 2016 - Present
In Vegas, Karpan’s took on a role he’d never held before as Director of Player Personnel. He was brought on as the Golden Knights prepared to enter the league and as we all know, Vegas had the most successful franchise launch in recent league history, making it all they way to the Stanley Cup Finals in their first year of existence before lifting the Cup in only their 6th year of NHL play.
Had Karpan finally found his ideal role in the league? As mentioned previously, he transitioned from amateur to pro scouting in 2010, and was actually Montréal’s Director of Pro Scouting for one season before being snatched up by the Golden Knights. His final year in Montréal and his move to Vegas served as his first promotion back to a director role since he left the Arizona desert back in 2005.
Former GM George McPhee and current GM Kelly McCrimmon have received much of the credit for how well the Golden Knights managed the expansion draft, but we must also give Vaughn Karpan a decent chunk of the credit as he oversaw Player Personnel for a franchise that had zero players when he joined the club.
The Knights built their Finals team around players the rest of the league agreed to make available to Vegas, players like William Karlsson, Shea Theodore, Jonathan Marchessault, Eric Haula and Alex Tuch — who was used to acquire Jack Eichel — along with Nate Schmidt and Marc-André Fleury.
When you add in the fact Karpan has finally been promoted to Assistant GM, there’s a case to be made he’s been a real difference maker for the Golden Knights.
There’s one other potential positive about Karpan’s time in Vegas: Chris Ilitch has been reported as being keen to make the Red Wings and the state of Michigan a desirable destination for players. While it’s tough to come up with tangible information on what role Karpan played in making Vegas so desirable, he’s overseen player personnel on a team that has routinely lured high profile players like Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner and Rasmus Andersson to the desert.
The lack of a state income tax has been reported as being very popular among today’s players, but I do wonder how much of that is due to teams like the Panthers, Lightning, Stars and Golden Knights all being highly competitive for such a long time?
Regardless, I am willing to give Karpan the benefit of the doubt here and believe Chris Ilitch would look positively on Karpan’s role in building the Golden Knights into an immediate contender and how popular Vegas has become as a destination.
Karpan’s Analytical Background
I don’t see much to suggest Vaughn Karpan has much of a hand in the analytics side of things. Since their inception, the Knights have relied on Dustin Walsh to oversee their analytics work, with director of hockey operations Tom Poraszka stating:
With Dustin’s help, we were able to integrate analytics into every decision we make on the hockey side. He’s been an integral part of everything we do.
Walsh’s alumni magazine of all places clues us in to the pivotal role he played in building out the Vegas roster during the expansion draft:
Walsh was helping build [early stage stat website] Stathletes from its infancy, then realized there could be opportunities to work directly for an NHL organization.
"We were partnering with Vegas to help with their scouting around the league when they decided they needed someone in-house to help explain and use the analytics even more than they were," said Walsh. "I volunteered myself. So, leading up to our inaugural season, I was helping with scouting players and doing analytics around the league on a trial run basis.
"After the expansion draft, they made it a full-time employment for the start of their first season in 2017-18."
While I think it’s totally reasonable to give Vaughn Karpan a lot of the credit for both the initial roster build out and the pro players they have targeted through trades and free agency, there’s not much to suggest he’s adept at using analytics to drive decision making. He’s obviously worked closely with an analytics person in Walsh, but I don’t think there’s much of a case to be made that he’s been driving the use of analytics given what has been said publicly about Walsh’s role since the expansion draft.
Is Vaughn Karpan a Good Choice?
I have to be honest and say I’m highly skeptical for two reasons:
There’s nothing to suggest he’s an analytics-heavy executive, and that’s been reported as an attribute Chris Ilitch is seeking.
The fact it took him so long to be elevated to an AGM role.
Successful NHL GMs tend to be elevated to an AGM role by their mid-40s. When Vaughn Karpan was in his mid 40s he was still an amateur scout. He may very well be an outlier, but after ten years in the wilderness, I’m skeptical of betting your future on an outlier.
To be fair to Vaughn Karpan, he seems to have found his calling as a pro scout. And if Detroit is to pull out of their current malaise, they are going to need a GM who can make trades to address the glaring need for scoring line centers. So if Karpan is indeed the choice, I would hope for the best by focusing on the fact Vegas has done an exceptional job acquiring top talent.
Another concern is Vegas doesn’t seem to have any key members of their front office leave for other organizations despite their impressive track record of success since their inception. Kerry Bubolz left the team president role for another position within team owner Bill Foley’s business portfolio.
Of course Karpan could be the first, but while we see other organizations lose talent when they have a long track record of success, that hasn’t happened with the Golden Knights.
I could perhaps see bringing on Vaughn Karpan as your President of Hockey Operations, as he’s been in the league for such a long time and has plenty of relationships across the sport. There’s reason to believe he’d be additive to what has been an atrocious pro scouting group under Steve Yzerman.
But general manager?
Nah.