NHL Contracts: Each team’s worst deal

Vegas Golden Knights: Tomas Tatar

Contract: Three years left, $5.3 million cap hit, $15.2 million total salary remaining ($1 million of that is a signing bonus), full no-trade clause until Feb. 2, 2020, 15-team no-trade clause from Feb. 2, 2020 to end of 2020-21 season.

The Vegas Golden Knights don’t really have any  horrible deals. Most of their long-term deals (namely Reilly Smith and Jonathan Marchessault) are very good. We’ll ignore David Clarkson since he’s getting an extended paid vacation on Robidas Island.

Marc-Andre Fleury’s new deal, which starts after the 2018-19 season, is pretty bad. That said, he has a ton of value to the Golden Knights off the ice and is their face of the franchise. Plus, it isn’t his active contract.

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This leaves Tomas Tatar with the worst deal. He didn’t have a good start with the Golden Knights, often finding himself a healthy scratch after being acquired at the trade deadline. That said, judging someone solely based on a 28 game sample size isn’t smart.

Tatar’s track record says he’s much better than a guy who’s going to give you eight points in 28 games. He’ll likely replace David Perron on the second forward line. Because the Knights were competitive, Tatar wasn’t given much time to get used to his new team or linemates. That’s something he’ll likely get in 2018-19.