The Las Vegas NHL expansion franchise has settled on longtime leagueexecutive George McPhee to serve as its inaugural general manager, and other media reports. A formal announcement is expected Trey Burke Jersey to be made Wednesday afternoon during a news conference with team owner Bill Foley. Foley said Monday he'd narrowed his search to two candidatesafter conducting more than a half dozen interviews last week, with experience being a major criterion. MORE: I can tell you the people we talked to are all well-known in the hockey community and are well-respected, . Theyre all very smart and theyve done different things for different teams. Some are strong on the (salary) cap. Some are strong when it comes to a se sing talent. But they all have strong backgrounds. McPhee, 58, who last served as a general manager with the Capitals from 1997 to2014,certainly meets those qualifications. He has more than two decades of experiencein NHL front offices. He spent last season with theNew York Islanders asspecial adviser togeneral manager Garth Snow. The Capitals reached the playoffs 10 of the 17 seasons he presided as general manager, including a trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 1998. Now he'll get to work on building an expansion franchise from the ground up in time to begin play in 2017. McPheedid something similarin Washington. He selectedAlexander Ovechkin No. 1 overall in 2004 to set in motion the next decade of contention for a franchise that had fallen on hard times. MORE: Las Vegas is guaranteed to pick in the top three innext summer's NHL Draft with a similar chance to find a face for the yet-to-be-named franchise. That's just one of the major decisions with which McPhee will be tasked. His first order of busine s is to a semble a scouting staff, which will help piece together a roster of players poached from the other 30 NHL franchises next summer. It has been 16 years since the NHL last expanded, with new rules in place to ensure the roster is competitive immediately, so McPhee and his staffwill need to navigate the nuances of the proce s. Jason Kidd Jersey