How the Vegas Golden Knights can afford Alex Pietrangelo

Creating enough cap space to sign Alex Pietrangelo would be hard, but not impossible for the Vegas Golden Knights.

The Vegas Golden Knights have built a true Stanley Cup contender in three years. It’s remarkable. Most expansion teams take at least five years to even make the playoffs. Some take even longer. But the Golden Knights have made a Stanley Cup Final appearance and an additional Western Conference Final appearance in their first three seasons.

However, they’re still a piece away from having a Stanley Cup parade down the Vegas Strip. Could that piece be Alex Pietrangelo? The Golden Knights have six solid defensemen, but the problem is they don’t have a go-to number one franchise defenseman. Nate Schmidt and Shea Theodore are close, but as they say, close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and bocce.

Pietrangelo is everything the Golden Knights need on defense. But since he’s going to be on the open market, signing him isn’t going to be cheap. Though these troubling times could affect the deals players get, Evolving Hockey has been in the ballpark of most of the RFA signings thus far. They project Pietrangelo to get an eight-year deal worth $9.071 million.

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Now, unless the Blues re-sign Pietrangelo or trade away his negotiating rights, he’s not signing an eight-year deal. So it’ll be seven years. $9.071 million sounds about right for Pietrangelo. This would make him the third-highest paid defenseman in the NHL, behind Drew Doughty and Erik Karlsson.

The Golden Knights might be able to knock down his AAV a bit because Nevada is a tax-friendly state. But it’s still going to cost quite a bit of money to sign him. Let’s call it $8.25 million a year. And the Golden Knights don’t have much cap space. According to CapFriendly, they have $4,940,124 of cap space with 18 players signed.

It sure won’t be easy for the Golden Knights to afford Pietrangelo. But it is possible. Here’s how the Vegas Golden Knights could manage to sign Pietrangelo and field a complete roster.

Step 1a: Sign Robin Lehner

Reportedly, the Golden Knights are going to sign Robin Lehner to a five-year extension worth $5 million a year. This would temporarily put Vegas over the $81.5 million cap ceiling, but teams are allowed to be over during the offseason (up to 10%), so this isn’t a problem.

Cap space after signing Lehner: -$59,876

Step 1b: Buyout Marc-Andre Fleury

This step could be tricky. Ideally, the Golden Knights would find someone willing to take on his entire $7 million cap hit. That would do wonders for their chances to sign Pietrangelo.

Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening. If Fleury and his agent are smart, any team that has a lot of cap space and/or needs a goalie is on his modified no-trade clause, which lets him block a trade to 10 teams.

However, the Golden Knights could retain up to $3.5 million of his salary. They’ll likely need to do this to trade Fleury in a market with numerous goalies available, both in free agency and on the trade market.

Usually, buying a player out isn’t an option. But it might be for the Golden Knights. They would save over $3.5 million a year for the next two seasons. After the 2021-22 season, the Golden Knights would be on the book for $2,083,333 a year for the next two seasons.

The cap ceiling will probably be flat for the 2021-22 season as well. But after that, maybe the cap ceiling will start going up again. It would be a huge risk for the Golden Knights, but if they want to create immediate cap space, this is their best option. Yes, they’d have to worry about things in a year, but it’s worth pointing out both Paul Stastny and Alec Martinez will have their contracts off the books after the 2020-21 season.

2020-21 cap space after buying out Fleury: $4,356,791

Step 1c: Find his replacement

Sign some dude who wants $1 million a year. There are more goalies than teams that need them right now. This means a few goalies are going to be left standing with no chairs to sit in, so to speak. One of them will be willing to take a dirt cheap deal. Aaron Dell would probably take a one-year $850,000 deal, right?

2020-21 cap space after signing Fleury’s replacement: $3,506,791

Still almost $5 million short from my conservative estimate of $8.25 million.

Step 2: The Hard Part

Here comes the hard part – clearing the rest of the cap space. There aren’t any obvious trade candidates on the roster. Trading Paul Stastny and his $6.5 million cap hit is the easy way. Ironically, you could probably trade him to the Winnipeg Jets, who need a second-line center, taking back Jack Roslovic, a young center.

I tried to sign everyone without trading Stastny, but I kept on falling just barely short. This is why a flat salary cap is going to hurt a lot of teams. They were operating assuming there would be a rise. There is not a rise, so obviously, quite a few teams are screwed. Vegas is (sort of) one of them.

After trading Stastny, we have $10 million of cap space, which means we can sign Pietrangelo to a seven-year deal worth $8.25 million annually. But we’re not done yet!

RFAs Chandler Stephenson and Jack Roslovic still have to be re-signed. Nick Holden is a useful defenseman but at $1.7 million, that’s a bit rich for an extra defenseman. So he’s being traded. This leaves the Golden Knights with $3,456,790 of cap space. Enough to barely squeeze in Roslovic and Stephenson.

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Martinez could be flipped to another team and Nicolas Hague could replace him, especially since that third pairing could easily be sheltered since Vegas now has two top-pairings.

Now, the $1 million question is this – would it be worth it to sign Pietrangelo? Also, would he sign for $8.25 million a year? Or even $8.5 million a year? My gut tells me Pietrangelo is re-signing with the Blues, simply because teams tend to find ways to keep their best players. But if he hits free agency and the Golden Knights play their cards right, signing Pietrangelo is much more likely than a pipe dream.