Heading in to the 2021-22 NHL regular season, many (including myself) had Vegas as a lock for the postseason. Instead, for the first time in franchise history the Golden Knights are goin’ golfing this summer. The Knights stumbled out of the gate and never put it all together consistently enough to feel comfortable enough about a playoff spot.

On paper, Vegas had one of the strongest rosters in the league. Unfortunately, due to injury that lineup seldom got to play together. Although injuries (long term injured reserve, or LTIR relief) did allow Vegas to acquire centerman Jack Eichel from the Buffalo Sabres, the mounting list of players that missed time due to injury was too much for them to overcome. Hell, it would have been extremely difficult for anyone to overcome that many injuries.

Vegas was relying on some players to be injured just long enough to make it through to the post season where the salary cap no longer applies. Today, the Knights have $615,000 in cap space after LTIR relief. That’s not enough room to activate any of their injured players without waiving anyone. And let’s say Reilly Smith and his $5 million cap hit needed to be activated, things could have gotten complicated.

On the bright side, Vegas will get a solid head start on what has to be an eventful off-season. There are plenty of decisions to be made and every arm-chair GM on Capfriendly will have plenty of time to play with that roster.

Notable Free Agents

Reilly Smith’s $5 million will be coming off the book along with Mattias Jankmark’s $2 million. With Vegas using roughly $10.5 million in LTIR relief, they can’t simply let these guys walk and use the money to pay some notable restricted free agents such as Nicholas Roy. And they can’t re-sign these players simply to use them as salary cap relief. In short, they’re hurtin’.

If Smith isn’t re-signed, his new cap hit cannot be used in LTIR money. So Vegas will be getting about $5.5 million in relief. They’re still over the cap.

Why does that matter?

Here’s where the fun begins. Money is going to have to move out. And Vegas might have to sweeten deals to get teams to take some of the contracts they could potential ship out. Unfortunately for Vegas, they lack both the draft capital (picks) and prospect pool to sweeten such deals that would free up space for them.

Trading for Injured Players

Players on LTIR can still be traded. This benefits Vegas by providing them the opportunity to bring contracts in that could give them a little wiggle room. If Vegas could identify a player under contract that could provide them some cap relief by simply sitting on LTIR, that would be worth pursuing. However, that relies on the Knights having the assets to facilitate such a deal.

Trade Candidates

Vegas will have to move out some dollars. Therefore, they can’t afford to retain salary on players that do get moved out. Every dollar matters.

Evgeni Dadonov… Again

He costs $5 million against the cap and he simply isn’t worth that cap hit. If Vegas could find a destination that Dadonov is willing to waive his no-trade clause for, that would be a massive win for their front office. He’s only under contract for one more year so this won’t be the toughest contract to move. The biggest obstacle here is getting Dadonov to waive his NTC.

He’s in his mid-30s and he is barely a 20-goal scorer. To get a contender to take him you’d have to imagine that Vegas eats some of that $5 million. If you’re Vegas, that simply isn’t acceptable. Arizona, Anaheim (lol), Los Angeles, Winnipeg, Montreal and New York (of the Islanders variety) all make sense to me. He’s only under contract for one more season. They’ll figure this out.

William Karlsson

Here’s the tough one. This guy is under contract through the 2026-27 season and he counts for $5.9 million against the cap. It seems that his best years are behind him. Unlike Dadonov, the toughest thing here will be finding a team willing to take on Karlsson’s contract. The usual suspect would be the Arizona Coyotes. The Coyotes, however, are sitting on a stockpile of draft capital and may be setting their sights on contending sometime in the not-so-distant future.

Karlsson doesn’t carry an egregious cap hit. But the term is certainly going to cause teams to back off. You can cross off any teams that are currently contenders such as the Leafs, Hurricanes, Blues or Lightning, just to name a few. Furthermore, forget about any teams with current or looming cap issues of their own (looking at you, Minnesota).

The way I see it, Vegas is stuck with this contract. But it’s certainly one that they would love to shed. They’ll have to part with assets they just don’t have in order to make this work.

Lastly, they’ll probably want to bring some fresh faces to the lockerroom. That’s going to require even more financial gymnastics. Most of all, I’m deeply interested by what Vegas could do. Luckily for them, they’ve got plenty of time to figure it out before the offseason kicks off for the rest of 2023’s condtenders.