The Golden Knights’ Future Looks Great, Unlike Their Current Roster
Now that the team is drafted and a few trades have been completed, a glimpse at the Vegas Golden Knights’ roster is starting to come into view. It isn’t a pretty sight, but it is becoming clear what to expect out of the NHL’s newest team. With three respectable goaltenders, 12 defensemen with NHL experience, and a slew of interesting choices for forwards, the Golden Knights are going to have to hope for low-scoring wins supported by strong two-way play from all skaters. As it stands right now, the players on the Golden Knights’ roster combined to score 157 goals last season, which would have finished eight behind the Colorado Avalanche’s 165 to put them 31st in the league in terms of goals scored. Perhaps Vegas’ General Manager George McPhee is just hoping there is very little on-ice success in 2017–2018 to help their draft position in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft, which would be hard to argue against. Either way, let’s look at what the Golden Knights are working with going into next season.
FORWARDS
The Good
The obvious name that jumps out is James Neal. The former Nashville Predator is coming off his eighth 20-goal season, and has a 30-goal season and 40-goal season in his NHL career. The 29-year-old forward has the highest cap hit for Vegas for a skater who won’t be place on Long Term Injured Reserve at the start of the season, but his 0.71 points-per-game average and positive puck possession impact will be huge for Vegas.
For some cap relief, the Florida Panthers let Vegas have Jonathan Marchessault, who is coming off a 30-goal season, and will have a cap hit of just $750,000 next season, if they also took Reilly Smith’s contract.
Erik Haula scored 15 goals this year despite having a somewhat normal shooting percentage, no work on the power play, and only averaging 13:48 of ice time per game last season. With an uptick in ice time per game and perhaps some work on the man advantage, the speedy forward could easily clear 20 goals.
The Bad
As mentioned above, Smith’s contract. Smith has produced a 1.5 Corsi For Percentage Relative (team’s shot attempt production comparing when a player is on the ice to when he is off the ice) or better for the last three seasons and has 87 points in two seasons with Florida, but that production doesn’t justify his cap hit of $5 million a year through the 2021–2022 season.
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare is a great personality in the locker room, but his on-ice benefits are limited. On top of being one of the worst 5-on-5 scorers in the league this past season, Bellemare is signed for two more years at a cap hit of $1.45 million a season.
Cody Eakin had three goals in 60 games during the 2016–2017 campaign and has never reached the 20-goal mark in his career. Being a negative Corsi For Percentage Relative player for each of the last four seasons with the Dallas Stars with 0.42 points-per-game average in 349 games, Eakin’s cap hit of $3.85 million for each year through 2019–2020 could be painful.
The Unknown
Vadim Shipachyov is a center who had 54 points or more in each of the last three seasons with SKA St. Petersburg in the KHL. Not much of a goal scorer throughout his career, Shipachyov could produce 15 to 20 goals for the Golden Knights while facilitating a ton of offense for presumably the top line.
Shipachyov could be joined in Vegas by two of his KHL teammates, as it looks like there’s a chance both Evgeny Dadonov and Nikita Gusev play for the Golden Knights in the near future. The 28-year-old Dadonov has yet to sign with Vegas, but the Panthers’ 2007 third-round selection could bring some scoring to the team. After spending 2009 to 2012 in North America, Dadonov has played the last four seasons in the KHL posting a 23-goal season and a 30-goal season in his last two campaigns.
Vegas acquired Gusev’s rights from the Tampa Bay Lightning during the Expansion Draft on Wednesday. The 24-year-old left winger was a seventh-round pick for the Lightning in 2012 and has spent the last seven seasons in the KHL. He has one year left on his deal with SKA St. Petersburg, who he produced 71 points for in 57 contests last season. Rumor has it though Gusev may want to extend his contract in the KHL so he can play in the Olympics for Russia.
Reid Duke and Tomas Hyka are also two forwards in their young twenties who will most likely start in the AHL with the Chicago Wolves, but could make the team without any NHL played between them.
DEFENSE
The Good
Brayden McNabb and Colin Miller could easily be the top pairing for Vegas next year, and that wouldn’t be the worst thing. McNabb only played in 49 games last season and produced a lowly four points, but each of his six different defensive partners in Los Angeles played better with the left-handed 26-year-old than apart from him. McNabb’s 6.3 Corsi For Percentage Relative this season was good enough for fourth amongst defensemen who played at least 500 minutes of 5-on-5 action this past season. Luckily for Vegas, one of the three in front of McNabb was Colin Miller, who was second with a 7.5 Corsi For Percentage Relative. Similar to McNabb, Miller improved the play for each of his seven different defensive partners last year and was one of the better d-men in the league in terms of both shot generation and shot suppression. Considering Miller is a right-handed shot, it would seem ideal that these two are paired together.
Although he’s currently an RFA, Nate Schmidt should be a regular on Vegas’ blue line. The mobile 25-year-old had 17 points in 60 games this past season for the Washington Capitals, and displayed a combination of impressive skating and offensive instincts. Despite being sheltered a bit in terms of usage in Washington, Schmidt would easily make either the Golden Knights’ second or third pairing respectable.
The Bad
Even after moving Trevor van Riemsdyk and David Schlemko (maybe two of the better defensemen they drafted), the Golden Knights still have 11 defensemen. With at least a few more d-men expected to be moved before the season starts, Marc Methot has been a name garnering a lot of attention. Hopefully for Vegas, Methot is moved. He is the only defenseman with NHL experience who is signed past the 2017–2018 season and for an unreasonable cap hit of $4.9 million per season. Although Methot is deemed a good defenseman by some fans and pundits, a lot of his success came with Erik Karlsson, who might be the best defenseman in the league. With almost all of his ice time coming with Karlsson this season, Methot’s possession numbers dropped significantly away from the perennial Norris Trophy candidate. On top of that, Methot failed to score a single goal and had 12 assists this season in 68 games despite playing alongside such a dynamic offensive d-man. Drop Methot’s level of a partner to somebody like Jason Garrison or Deryk Engelland and it could be terrible news.
Speaking of Garrison and Engelland, they make up a group of defensemen who Vegas will have to stomach for at least a season. These two defensemen combined with Methot, Alexei Emelin, and Luca Sbisa give the Golden Knights five defensemen who finished last season with a -2.1 Corsi For Percentage Relative or worse and failed to reach above a 0.80 points-per-60 rate at 5-on-5 play.
The Unknown
The only defenseman besides Methot locked up past the 2017–2018 season is Jake Bischoff, a 22-year-old left-handed defenseman who has yet to play in the NHL. After serving as an alternate captain for the University of Minnesota for a second straight year this past season, Bischoff posted three points in six games for the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, the New York Islanders’ AHL affiliate. Regarded as a mobile and smart defenseman who is more defensively responsible than offensively aggressive, Bischoff has a much clearer path to the NHL over the next few years with Vegas than he ever did with the Islanders.
GOALTENDING
Out of the three goaltenders currently with Vegas, Marc-Andre Fleury seems the most likely to start barring a trade over the summer. After that, using Calvin Pickard or Jean-Francois Berube as the backup netminder is a choice that doesn’t seem to have much impact. Pickard posted a .927 save percentage in 36 games in his first two seasons with the Avalanche before he went .904 behind the worst team in the history of the 30-team NHL. Berube has a .900 save percentage in 21 games over the last two seasons with the Islanders, but has shown flashes of great play.
FREE AGENCY
With just a hair under $3.8 million in cap space with five restricted free agents and three unrestricted free agents that need to be signed, Vegas is most likely out of the free agency market this offseason. Again, that’s as it currently stands. McPhee could move some of those defenseman with just one year left on their contracts to teams looking for depth and open up some cap space.
FUTURE
Anticipating that the Golden Knights will be a terrible team to start and will most likely get worse at the 2018 trade deadline, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they will be making the first overall selection in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft.
The best attribute to the roster put together by McPhee is the fact that it won’t be here for long. Other than Reilly Smith’s contract, the majority of players currently with Vegas have contracts with little to no term and a manageable cap hit. McPhee stockpiled six additional draft picks for the 2017 NHL Draft, six draft picks from other teams for the 2018, 2019, and 2020 NHL Entry Drafts, and will have $41.55 million in cap space in the summer of 2018 if the cap limit stays at $75 million. Those draft pick totals and cap space isn’t even considering the possibility of moving a player who is anticipated to be on Vegas’ roster past the 2017–2018 season.
Anticipating that the Golden Knights will be a terrible team to start and will most likely get worse at the 2018 trade deadline, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they will be making the first overall selection in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft. This could be the best outcome for Vegas, as there are several franchise-altering players at the top of the draft board.
Rasmus Dahlin is a highly praised two-way defenseman who if gifted offensively with Swedish Hockey League experience already at the age of 17. Andrei Svechnikov is a 6’2” right winger who produced 29 goals and 29 assists in 48 games for the Muskegon Lumberjacks in the United States Hockey League this past year. Joe Veleno was the first player to ever receive Exceptional Player Status in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, where he posted 40 points in 45 games for the Saint John Sea Dogs. Unless the Golden Knights receive the unfortunate fate the Avalanche endured at the NHL Draft Lottery this past April, Vegas will add one of these three players to their organization.
The time is most certainly not now for the Golden Knights, but McPhee did an alright job at leaving Vegas with an opportunity to be successful within the next few seasons.
