Golden Knights captain Mark Stone is expected to miss the balance of the regular season and is questionable to return during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, TSN’s Darren Dreger said on Thursday’s episode of “Insider Trading.” Stone has missed four games with an upper-body injury, which, per multiple reports, is a lacerated spleen.
Vegas placed the 31-year-old on standard injured reserve last week, meaning they aren’t receiving the potential long-term injured reserve relief provided by his $9.5MM cap hit. That will change before the March 8 trade deadline, though, and they’ll be able to use that space as they please to make deadline acquisitions for the second straight season.
Unlike Stone, first-line center Jack Eichel and his $10MM cap hit is on LTIR. However, as indicated by wearing a full-contact sweater in practice Thursday, Eichel will return to the lineup in the coming days.
The Golden Knights, who have also been using the LTIR relief provided by goaltender Robin Lehner’s $5MM cap hit to stay compliant throughout the season, will likely place Stone on LTIR along with activating Eichel in corresponding transactions when the latter is ready to return. The latter has missed 18 games after undergoing knee surgery in January.
Lost in the cap space shuffle is the significance of Stone’s absence. No player that GM Kelly McCrimmon could acquire over the next week will be an upgrade on their captain, who remains in a very elite class of two-way wingers. He finishes his season with 16 goals, 37 assists, 53 points, and a +1 rating in 56 games.
That works out to 0.95 points per game, his highest rate since his 61-in-55 campaign in 2020-21, which placed him ninth in Hart Trophy voting and third in Selke Trophy voting. Serious long-term and, frankly, random injuries continue to plague the Winnipeg-born star, who’s played more than 60 games in a season just once since arriving in Nevada.
Stone’s absence will mean an extended opportunity for many down the stretch, namely 2020 first-round pick Brendan Brisson. While his production with AHL Henderson this season has been disappointing, he has a goal and four assists in 11 showings with Vegas. He was promoted to the top line alongside original Knights William Karlsson and Jonathan Marchessault for last night’s 5-4 loss against the Bruins.
It also means that McCrimmon can be more aggressive in pursuing help at the deadline than his division rival and likely first-round playoff opponent, the Oilers. Dreger said McCrimmon “will utilize [Stone’s] cap space” to add another top-six forward, much like their pickup of Ivan Barbashev from the Blues at last year’s deadline.
Vegas and Edmonton will be in the hunt for many of the same targets, which Dreger says could include the Blues’ Pavel Buchnevich, the Kraken’s Jordan Eberle, and, if extension talks fall through, the Devils’ Tyler Toffoli. A third Pacific Division team, the Kings, has also been linked to Toffoli.
After swapping Eichel and Stone on LTIR (and activating defenseman Tobias Björnfot, currently on an LTI conditioning loan to Henderson), the Golden Knights will have approximately $5.6MM of cap space available. That’s nearly twice as much as the Oilers’ $2.4MM projected deadline availability, which is already artificially high given their slim 21-player roster.
For Vegas’ purposes, Buchnevich would be the closest stylistic replacement for Stone. He would also carry a higher acquisition cost and likely a minimal amount of salary retention by the Blues, as, unlike Eberle and Toffoli, he’s signed through next season at a cap hit of $5.8MM, slightly above the Golden Knights’ projected deadline availability.
Buchnevich, 28, leads the Blues in goals with 24 and is second on the team in scoring with 48 points in 57 games. He’s not producing at the point-per-game-plus pace we’ve seen from him over the past two years, but his possession impacts are the strongest of his eight-year career: an incredible 11% relative Corsi share at even strength to pair with a strong +6.9 expected rating. He wouldn’t replace the massive hole Stone’s leadership leaves in the chemistry of Vegas’ forward group, but his on-ice results go a long way toward softening the blow.
here we go again, cap circumvention at its finest, they’re going to make it look serious enough even though he’ll be 100% again by game 1 of the playoffs
It sure seems like that’s exactly what they are doing….again
We all see why they hired the General Fanager guy.
So why doesn’t the cap extend into the postseason?
expanded rosters, it should only be to a certain limit though, 23 man roster goes up to a 27 man roster, should only increase $3M-$4M tops
You will get multiple different answers to this, one of which is: Rich owners pay a lot of $$$ to accumulate good players and want all of that firepower available when it matters most, i.e. The Playoffs. (The other side of this coin is: This equates to rich teams flipping off the teams who are honestly cap compliant during the regular season, which violates much of the premise of a salary cap.)
Another response is: Players with big-$$$ contracts tend to be stars, so the NHL wants all of the star power it can get to drive TV ratings during the playoffs. They don’t want Kucherov/Stone (or Patty Kane in 2015) watching from the press box while they’re trying to sell inflated ad space to advertisers.
My take – because players’ salaries aren’t pro-rated into the postseason. Salaries are technically paid out throughout the league year (July 1 to June 30), but that compensation is for their regular-season work. Players who make the postseason aren’t intrinsically paid more than players who don’t, aside from the playoff bonus pool, which is distributed to teams, not individual players.
So, if players aren’t additionally compensated for the playoffs, how can you have a salary cap? The only reasonable argument I could get behind is applying the offseason salary cap rules to postseason teams, meaning they could exceed the salary cap by 10%.
I just wrote that they should be allowed 15% over cap in the SCPO. This would also include all their Black Aces. Great minds think alike!
The Black Aces are a weird wrinkle, yeah. I’d advocate for bringing back the taxi squad for them in the postseason.
Lots of wrong answers above. First, only some teams make playoffs, and they don’t know before the season, so how would cap work for non-playoff teams vs. playoff teams? Answer: It would not. Second, salaries are paid out over the regular season days which is about 180-183 per year so that is how teams must plan it and cap hits are calculated daily, hence why players go up and down from minors often who are waiver exempt. Players are not paid in oof season NOR in playoffs other than bonuses from league for participating or winning each round. This is the CORRECT answer and its Capfriendly that has the answers as well as the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
I think they have a deal in place to acquire Guentzel on deadline day. This would allow Vegas to accrue the maximum space under the cap that they can get, and besides, Jake won’t return for another couple of weeks.
tbh Vegas does have a very weak pool of prospects and picks, i think Pittsburgh can get a better offer from another competitor, but im sure Vegas will offer all they have in efforts, a 1st a 2nd and 1 or 2 of their top prospects including Brisson, i honestly dont know who else valuable they have to offer, obviously excluding their current NHL roster
One solution is to extend cap thru first round so that there is added risk of this move backfiring.
It’s beyond furious that we are still talking about this & the league & players union has done nothing to rectify. Starting to think they don’t care about us lol.
or betting odds either apparently, i didn’t bet but its dictated the outcome of 3 out of 8 of the last playoffs, most fans bets before the deadline have gotten franked