Red Wings goalie Petr Mrazek splashes water on his face during a game against Boston in February 2016 in Detroit. Mrazek is thought to be one of a number of young goaltenders available to the Vegas Golden Knights in expansion draft. (AP photo)

George McPhee wants his fellow general managers to make him an offer he can’t refuse.

The Vegas Golden Knights GM might as well be The Godfather of the NHL during this three-day expansion draft window. He holds the cards for a significant chunk of the league’s talent, fielding calls from colleagues willing to trade something to keep McPhee from plucking certain players from their rosters, or to take someone from another team to flip in a deal.

All trade roads run through Vegas. And every move has its price.

“Whatever you want to give us has to be better than what we can claim from that club,” McPhee told reporters in Las Vegas on Sunday. “Then we’re going to go to that club and say: ‘We have interest in this player, there’s another club that has interest in this player. How do we want to do this? How can we protect your roster? You can negotiate your way out of this if you wish.'”

He emphasized that each team will be contacted and given the opportunity to have a say in protecting its roster.

Beyond building likely the most competitive expansion team in NHL history, McPhee has the golden opportunity to play some desperate teams against each other and build up a collection of draft picks and other assets. Vegas must pick one player from each of the existing 30 teams, but there’s only so much room on the roster next season even with some minor league prospects thrown in.

Vegas could easily get its franchise goaltender in Pittsburgh’s Marc-Andre Fleury, a top-line scoring winger with 10 20-goal seasons in Nashville’s James Neal and a top-pairing defenseman in Ottawa’s Marc Methot while also picking up some potentially high draft picks for laying off young talent from Anaheim, Columbus and the New York Islanders.

Shortly after protected lists were released Sunday morning, GMs began calling McPhee to try to poach available players from other teams. Opportunistic GMs can feed the Golden Knights’ future to get a player who otherwise wouldn’t be on the trade market.

“Everybody’s going to have conversations,” Brad Treliving of the Calgary Flames said. “The staring contest ends. You see everybody’s lists. … Now you start to have discussions and see if there’s things in there that can help.”

The expansion draft rules made it so that Vegas would wind up with strong enough goaltending to be competitive even in its inaugural season. There’s also a surplus of young goaltending talent, including Detroit’s Petr Mrazek, Washington’s Philipp Grubauer, the New York Rangers’ Antti Raanta and Colorado’s Calvin Pickard.

Need a goalie? McPhee might be able to help.

That’s what Arizona Coyotes GM John Chayka was thinking after trading veteran goalie Mike Smith to Calgary on Saturday. Sure, he could sign a free agent July 1, or he could take advantage of this rare circumstance.

“There’s a lot of unprotected goalies out there,” Chayka said. “Vegas doesn’t need 10. They only need a couple, and there’s opportunities for trades from that perspective. … Goalie’s one position where there’s a lot of good goaltenders out there right now and not a whole lot of spots.”