Vegas Golden Knights: Does William Karlsson deserve his big raise?
By Jeremy Tuch
William Karlsson had a career year in 2017-18, leading the Vegas Golden Knights to unheralded success. Now, he wants to get paid for it.
William Karlsson wasn’t the first player the Vegas Golden Knights wanted to pick from the Columbus Blue Jackets during the expansion draft. The Blue Jackets had too few spots for too many players, though, and were forced to leave forward Josh Anderson exposed in the draft.
The Golden Knights said they’d leave Anderson alone. However, they requested that the Blue Jackets meet some modest demands. Vegas ended up taking a 2017 first-round pick (which they then flipped to the Winnipeg Jets to move up to take Nick Suzuki at number 13), a second-round pick in 2019, and David Clarkson‘s contract. The Knights selected Karlsson from the Blue Jackets, and that was that.
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“Wild Bill” had a wild year for the upstart Golden Knights, doubling his career scoring numbers in half the amount of games played. Between 2015 and 2017 with the Blue Jackets, he appeared in 162 games and had a total of 15 goals and 30 assists with a plus-minus rating of +1.
In Vegas last season, he played all 82 games, scoring 43 goals and 35 assists, along with a league-leading plus-minus rating of +49.
One creeping issue coming into play this summer is that Karlsson is a restricted free agent. It used to mean a lot more back when players were signed to offer sheets occasionally.
But since that move has become largely unused, it amounts to mostly giving the team maintaining control and the restricted free agent getting a raise.
Arbitration kicks in if the player has at least four seasons of NHL experience, which brings us to the topic at hand – Karlsson. He filed for arbitration before the deadline last month. While both sides could have negotiated some kind of deal, neither side blinked. Now that the arbitration figures have been made public, it’s clear why this was the case.
According to Chris Johnston from SportsNet, Karlsson is requesting $6.5 million for this season, and the Golden Knights are offering $3.5 million. They are about as far apart as the Vegas Strip and Karlsson’s native country Sweden.
How is it that the sides are so far apart in their opinions? Let’s look a little further into the numbers to see what both sides are looking at.
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From Karlsson’s point of view, it seems obvious. He led the team in goals, was second in assists to linemate Jon Marchessault, led the league in plus-minus, stayed out of the box (just 12 PIM), was a positive possession player with a 53.9 percent CorsiFor percentage, and played nearly 19 minutes per game. He did all of this on the top line on a team that made the Stanley Cup Finals in their inaugural season.
The Golden Knights are going to be playing devil’s advocate, with a couple of big points to back them up. In Columbus, Karlsson was nowhere near the player he was with Vegas, scoring far fewer goals, and even was a negative possession player at around a 48 percent CorsiFor percentage. He wasn’t munching minutes and wasn’t winning as many faceoffs.
Another point the Knights will make is the odds are against him keeping up his 23.4 percent shooting percentage (highest in the league in 2017-18). The Knights will argue (but hope it’s not true) he’s due for a regression because those numbers are simply unsustainable.
Now that the case has been presented, let’s play arbitrator and come to a verdict. Yes, he scored lots of goals but his abnormally high shooting percentage warrants concern. Karlsson had great linemates to help support and inflate those numbers, but he was the center and made Marchessault and Reilly Smith better for it.
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He wasn’t amazing in Columbus, but he wasn’t given the chance to shine there. Because Karlsson’s been given top minutes for the first time, and because he’s shown he’s the real deal by sustaining his scoring rates over the course of the season (his game log speaks for itself), expect Karlsson to get his a substantial raise with an award of at least $5 million.