The Vegas Golden Knights have two key unrestricted free agents up front in James Neal and David Perron, and at least one of them has made his desire to stay clear. David Schoen of the Las Vegas Review-Journal tweets that Perron discussed an extension during the season with the Golden Knights but couldn’t come to an agreement. Perron will become a UFA on July 1st if he doesn’t come to an agreement with Vegas, but told Schoen “I want to stay.”
Vegas heads into this offseason with a tremendous amount of cap room and only three or four long-term deals on the books. They can certainly afford to be big players in free agency, including locking up Perron and Neal if they so choose. Even though the former wants to stay however, doesn’t guarantee that he’ll stick around in Sin City.
Perron actually finished third on the Golden Knights in points this season, setting a new career-high with 66 in his 70 games. That’s an incredible rate and obviously a big part of how Vegas had so much success in the regular season, but when things dried up in the postseason things didn’t look quite as rosy. Perron was held to a single postseason goal—just the fourth in his 57-game playoff career—and though his nine points in 15 games doesn’t look so bad he was actually taken out of the lineup during the Stanley Cup Finals. Whether that was due to an undisclosed injury or just his ineffective offense isn’t exactly clear, but it begs the question of whether the Golden Knights are really willing to pay up to retain him.
Now 30, Perron has been a good-if-not-great offensive player for his whole career. With 444 points in 722 games, he’s capable of creating offense at even-strength and on the powerplay, but has never been able to really drive a team’s scoring. His most recent contract with the St. Louis Blues was for two years and $7.5MM, a number he’s likely looking to eclipse after having such a successful regular season. Whether he’s worth more than $4MM to the Golden Knights isn’t clear though especially if it’s a multi-year contract. After acquiring Tomas Tatar, Vegas has plenty of options on the wing with more center depth coming up through their prospect system. If they believe that they could compete without him, Perron might have to look elsewhere for his next opportunity.