Vegas Golden Knights center William Karlsson (71) is congratulated Jonathan Marchessault (81) and Shea Theodore (27) after Karlssons goal during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Chicago Blackhawks at T-Mobile Arena Saturday, March 26, 2022.
Friday, June 10, 2022 | 2 a.m.
If there has been any silver lining to the Golden Knights having a longer offseason, it has been more time to plan out next season’s roster.
Suddenly it’s June, and it’ll soon be time for general manager Kelly McCrimmon and president of hockey operations George McPhee to make some tough decisions with this roster.
“All of those are really important aspects of the offseason of an NHL team,” McCrimmon said last month. “We have work to do in some of those areas.”
Even with the salary cap increasing to $82.5 million, the Golden Knights have 17 players on the roster at $500,000 over the cap. Free agency begins July 13, but players can re-sign with their clubs prior to then.
Teams can go 10 percent over the salary cap until the season starts, which is a route the Golden Knights have taken before. It’s likely they go that way again with who needs to be re-signed.
The Golden Knights have 11 restricted free agents that need new deals. Five of them — Nic Roy, Keegan Kolesar, Nic Hague, Brett Howden and Jake Leschyshyn — played at least half of last season. Those first four will get one-way deals, whereas Leschyshyn could still be offered — and likely would accept — a two-way deal to allow the option to start in Henderson.
Vegas has four unrestricted free agents to address, the two most important being Reilly Smith and Mattias Janmark.
That’s at least six players stuck with a “high priority” label. Then it turns to figuring out how much the Golden Knights pay these players.
We used Evolving Hockey’s contract projection tool as a baseline to figure out what these next deals will look like. As the analytics website details, this is not an accurate representation, but it’s utilized with data from CapFriendly to gauge what could be coming.
Here’s what that looks like:
Restricted free agents
Nicolas Roy – 3 years, $3.071 million AAV
Nicolas Hague – 2 years, $2.095 million AAV
Keegan Kolesar – 3 years, $1.906 million AAV
Brett Howden – 2 years, $1.622 million AAV
Unrestricted free agents
Reilly Smith – 5 years, $6.301 million AAV
Mattias Janmark – 2 years, $1.932 million AAV
Those six get the roster to 23 players, but at $16.699 million over the cap.
Again, these are projections, not the actual numbers. Teams with cap space in need of a top-six winger could pay Smith up to $6 million. The Golden Knights do not have the means for that, nor should they consider making him the fourth-highest paid forward on the roster.
That’s where the math gets tricky, even with the slim likelihood of Smith returning to Vegas.
This is where trades come into play. It likely begins with Evgenii Dadonov (1 year, $5 million) and Laurent Brossoit (1 year, $2.325 million). Much like past transactions, the Golden Knights are likely to get a minimal return on any deal they make.
Vegas will avoid any trade deadline debacle with Dadonov this time around when he submits a new 10-team no-trade list before July 1. While we can’t know for sure which teams Dadonov won’t want to be traded to, there are some contenders with cap space that could use Dadonov if they need a Plan B.
The same goes for Brossoit. His time in Vegas is surely up after Logan Thompson’s emergence late last season, and teams in need of goaltending depth will surely look to him for backup purposes.
Let’s say the Golden Knights don’t bring back Smith. That would leave them $4.765 million over the cap. That leaves one more difficult move to make. We took to Twitter and asked people if Vegas was forced to trade William Karlsson or Alec Martinez, which would be preferred?
Over 2,000 votes were cast with a majority saying they would rather move on from Karlsson and his five years remaining at $5.9 million, rather than two years left at $5.25 million for Martinez.
Ultimately, we land on three trades, all cap dumps:
New York Rangers acquire William Karlsson, Golden Knights acquire a 2024 third-round pick.
Calgary Flames acquire Evgenii Dadonov, Golden Knights acquire a 2024 sixth-round pick.
New Jersey Devils acquire Laurent Brossoit, Golden Knights acquire a 2023 fifth-round pick.
In addition, the Golden Knights buy out the contract of Nolan Patrick. Ideally, he’d be put on waivers, but that option is not presented.
Going through this exercise was difficult. Trying to find ideal trade partners who have the cap space even after re-signing their own free agents is a challenge.
A third team could serve as a broker for any of these deals. The option isn’t available in the Armchair GM feature on CapFriendly.
The Rangers reunite Karlsson with coach Gerard Gallant, which could get him back to that peak form. Karlsson joins a talented center group with Mika Zibanejad and Filip Chytil, and is a quality insurance policy should the Rangers not re-sign Ryan Strome or Andrew Copp.
The Devils are in need of goaltending and can find better options than Brossoit. If they fall through, however, Brossoit becomes available at a cheap price for the Devils to at least have as a backup.
Calgary’s acquisition of Dadonov was the most complicated because Calgary has to take care of restricted free agent wingers Matthew Tkachuk and Andrew Mangiapane. The elephant in the room is the unrestricted free agent status of Johnny Gaudreau. He’s played his way to a deal nearing $10 million and could get that from Calgary. Would he stay with the Flames, though? Dadonov becomes a contingency plan should Gaudreau want to change course.
This is the deal where a third team could be involved to take a portion of Dadonov’s salary in exchange for a draft pick.
The dust settles, and this Vegas roster emerges from the rubble:
Forwards
Max Pacioretty – Jack Eichel – Mark Stone
Jonathan Marchessault – Chandler Stephenson – Brett Howden
Mattias Janmark – Nicolas Roy – Brendan Brisson
William Carrier – Jake Leschyshyn – Keegan Kolesar
Michael Amadio
Defensemen
Alec Martinez – Alex Pietrangelo
Shea Theodore – Brayden McNabb
Nicolas Hague – Zach Whitecloud
Ben Hutton – Dylan Coghlan
Goalies
Robin Lehner
Logan Thompson
This roster totals to $81,147,001, giving approximately $1.35 million in cap space.
Discounts are always in play for these new deals. Janmark, who signed a one-year, $2 million deal last offseason, could take a pay cut if he wanted to return. Similar for Kolesar, one of the few enforcers left on the Vegas roster, making close to $2 million on a new deal.
The two notable changes replace Dadonov and Smith. Before sustaining a scary upper-body injury in March, Howden was one of the Golden Knights’ biggest surprises, with 20 points in 47 games. Also sliding into the lineup is top prospect Brendan Brisson, who had eight points in seven games with Henderson after leaving the University of Michigan.
The Golden Knights would benefit greatly if the 20-year-old Brisson, with his NHL-caliber shot, is ready for the next level.
Look for Michael Amadio, who saw some top-six minutes late last season, to challenge Howden/whomever for that second-line spot.
This isn’t the end-all, be-all approach for Vegas. The front office has been unpredictable in the past, and that’s why nothing should be ruled out, including rival teams handing out offer sheets for the restricted free agents to put Vegas in a bind.
There was time before. It’s starting to run out now.
Danny Webster can be reached at 702-259-8814 or [email protected]. Follow Danny on Twitter at twitter.com/DannyWebster21.
