The Vegas Golden Knights’ free agency gamble paid off big time
Trading Nate Schmidt paid off big time for the Vegas Golden Knights.
There was a time, not too long ago, when the Vegas Golden Knights didn’t exist.
The NHL had 30 teams, each conference was balanced, and for the most part, life was good.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the Knights appeared, stole away several quality players in the 2017 Expansion Draft, and made it all the way to the NHL Finals in their first year of operation.
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Fun fact: The Golden Knights have more Finals appearances than four of the league’s ‘original’ 30 teams.
But heading into free agency after the 2020-2021 season, the Golden Knights were faced with arguably the most significant conundrum in their young franchise’s history: How to get better with limited resources.
Despite only being three years old, the Golden Knights’ salary cap was sort of a mess, with $81.5 million of a possible $81.5 million in salary cap space already accounted for heading into free agency. While this isn’t some insurmountable hurdle the likes of which are seldom seen in professional sports, as all teams have plenty of options to free up cap space if need be, it presented a unique challenge for Vegas because of the team’s turbulent 2019-20 season.
Since winning 13 playoff games in their first year of existence, the most ever by an expansion team in their inaugural season, the Golden Knights fell back to earth a bit in 2018-19, earning 16 fewer points en route to a loss to the San Jose Sharks in the first round of the playoffs. After their struggles continued through an underwhelming start to the 2019-20 season, going 24-19-6 through the first 49 games of the season, Vegas’ front office made their first coaching change as a franchise and handed inaugural head coach Gerard Gallant his walking papers in favor of Peter DeBoer.
Under DeBoer, the Golden Knights found new life and improved their winning percentage from .489 to a much more respectable .688 before having their season halted along with the rest of the league back in March. Though the Golden Knights still finished out the season in first place in NHL Pacific Division, the team ultimately lost to the Dallas Stars in the Conference Finals, who, in turn, lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Stanley Cup Finals.
With new life under DeBoer and a desperate desire to establish themselves as the franchise to beat in the Pacific Division, the Golden Knights turned their eyes to free agency to land a star, even if they had to blow on the dice a little to pull it off.
I mean hey, it is Las Vegas after all.
You see, while the Vegas Golden Knights already had one of the better defensemen in the league in Nate Schmidt, their front office firmly set their sights on Alex Pietrangelo as the perfect complement to Brayden McNabb on their DL1. The St. Louis Blues’ captain since 2016, Pietrangelo scored 16 goals and 52 points en route to finishing fourth in the league’s Norris Trophy voting in 2019 and was considered by many the top-prize on this year’s free agent market.
For a young, ever-evolving team looking to establish a long-term culture, what better way to take a step forward than to steal away the captain of the 2019 NHL champions?
But how would it all come together? Again, even $1 million goes a heck of a lot further in hockey than, say, basketball, but the Golden Knights would have to free up quite a bit more to land a defenseman projected to make $7-8 million per season before free agency opened up.
So, the Vegas Golden Knights did Vegas things and made an uber risky trade shipping Schmidt to the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for a 2022 third-round pick (and $5.95 million in cap relief).
Granted, I highly doubt the Golden Knights’ brass would have executed such a trade if they didn’t have very good intel that Pietrangelo was all in on taking his talents to Vegas, but there’s an old adage on sports – and life really – that nothing is official until you have it in writing.
Had some other team swooped in at the last second with a better offer, the Golden Knights very well may have found their championship window severely limited by a self-inflicted wound.
Fortunately – assuming you are a Vegas fan, of course – that didn’t happen.
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The Vegas Golden Knights were able to land Alex Pietrangelo on a seven-year, $61.6 million contract to pair up with Brayden McNabb long term and even got a future third-round pick out of the deal for Schmidt. Their gamble paid off, their hubris was rewarded, and most fortunately of all, Las Vegas fans the world over get to see their favorite team take a step toward their ultimate goal of bringing the Cup to Sin City with the best backline one-two punch in the Pacific Conference. Granted, the team still needs to free up roughly $2.85 million to get under the cap, but that could be as easy as moving on from Alec Martinez and his $4 million cap hit.