The Vegas Golden Knights have signed Trade Deadline acquisition Noah Hanifin to an eight-year contract extension (Twitter link). The deal reportedly carries a $7.35MM cap hit, a six-year full-no-trade clause, and full signing bonuses, per Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic (Twitter link).
Hanifin is earning front-page news once again after his trade market dominated much of this year’s Trade Deadline prep. Vegas was a surprise landing spot for the top defender, acquiring him in a three-team trade that saw them send Daniil Miromanov and a 2025 first-round and third-round pick to the Calgary Flames and a 2024 fifth-round pick to the Philadelphia Flyers. Hanifin has since played 16 games with the Golden Knights, recording two goals and nine points. He’s recorded the second-most points among Vegas defensemen since joining, behind Shea Theodore’s 11 points. The scoring brings Hanifin up to 13 goals and 44 points in 77 games, flirting with his career-high 48 points posted in the 2021-22 season.
Philadelphia’s brokerage of the deal reduced Hanifin’s cap hit to just $1.2375MM – just enough for Vegas to acquire Tomáš Hertl’s $6.75MM cap hit. The Golden Knights now have just $1.464MM in off-season cap space, per CapFriendly, assuming an $87.5MM salary cap. They’ll have to negotiate with seven free agents, including Jonathan Marchessault and Alec Martinez, now the only expiring defenseman.
While they’re almost destined to face cap troubles down the line, the Vegas Golden Knights now have Hanifin, Theodore, Alex Pietrangelo, Mark Stone, Jack Eichel, and Hertl signed through the 2025-26 season. That’s not to mention the impactful supporting cast, like William Karlsson, Ivan Barbashev, and Zach Whitecloud, who are all signed through the next two seasons. Vegas wasn’t able to top 100 points this season, though they should be one of the final teams to secure a playoff spot. But they’ll have plenty of time for a more prolific season, with their core pieces – including three top defensemen – now locked up for the foreseeable future.
The deal is a shade cheaper than the rumored eight-year, $60MM deal Hanifin had discussed with the Flames earlier in the season. The AAV/cap hit on that would have come in at $7.5MM per year, meaning he’s taken $150K less annually and $1.2MM less in total over the life of the contract to extend in Vegas.
This was Hanifin’s chance to cash in on a long-term deal and his first offseason being eligible for unrestricted free agency if he chose. Fresh off his 27th birthday in January, he already has quite the career under his belt, accumulating 62 goals, 221 assists and 283 points with an even rating over 675 games with the Flames, Golden Knights and Hurricanes since his debut in 2015.
Hanifin is a definite top-pair threat but not an elite point producer or power-play contributor. That makes his cap hit, which is 8.8% of the ceiling at the time of signing, a tad steep when examining comparables. Players with similar roles and results, like the Bruins’ Hampus Lindholm and the Blue Jackets’ Damon Severson, signed eight-year extensions over the last two years with cap hits of $6.5MM and $6.25MM, respectively, which were between 7.5% and 8% of the cap ceiling at the time of signing. A slightly richer and older comparable is Maple Leafs blue-liner Morgan Rielly, who inked an eight-year, $7.5MM AAV extension in October 2021 that was 9.2% of the ceiling at the time of signing.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports.
The contract is 8 years with a $7.35 million cap hit. The Knights now have just over $81 million in cap commitments for next season. Even with the cap going up, that doesn’t leave them much room to re-sign Marchessault and/or Stephenson. Carrier, Roy, Mantha & Amadio are also UFA’s & Dorofeyev is a RFA. Some big decisions coming in Vegas
At least the biggest decision is done.
even if they trade Martinez theyll probably still lose Marchessault, Stephenson will likely get overpaid elsewhere too
Martinez is a UFA after this season. They’ll just let him walk. They already have 7 d signed for next season with the Hanifin contract
They will trade Karlsson for futures now that they have Hertl, then decide to sign Stephenson or Marchessault.
Any term after 5 years for Hanifin is Irresponsible.
This team is like the Sharks of a few years ago if the Sharks could ever actually win the title. 4-5 years from now they are going to be stuck with horrible expensive contracts and need years of rebuilding.
As a Sharks fan…
Yep. (And we would have won if the refs weren’t Pittsburgh fans.)
Welcome to the NHL… Refs are a joke year in and year out…
Who is going on LTIR for Vegas in October. What mystery ailment will manifest itself?
Seeing a team barely able to cling to the final wild card spot this deep in salary cap hell, and unable to even maintain its existing roster…
Prepare for some bad years, Vegas fans.
The contract is fine.
Rielly’s not a great comparable. He’s a far better offensive player and worse defender. Rielly is absolute dynamite offensively, is a legitimate 1D scoring threat (his defensive work isn’t 1D), and plays PP minutes.
Even if its slightly less then what he was rumored to want in Calgary he will clear more due to the different tax situations. In Canada and California the players pay 49%-51% in tax
He is taxed at 40% in vegas to he takes home about 4.5M oer year and not the 3.75 he was asking for in Calgary
LMAO no trade meaningless in vegas. It is corporate america. If they want him out . He will leave .
a good question is will Stone go on LTIR for the rest of the regular season again at the deadline next year for a 4th year in a row?
Shiny new toy!
Marchessault will be 34 next Christmas and some Irresponsible GM will out bid the Knights this summer, Martinez will retire, Stone has chronic back issues and may never come back, Dorofeyev won’t get much of a raise, Vegas can easily navigate through all of this during the summer if they are smart!
Reasonable deal for a player like Hanifin, but I question if this is where Vegas should have spent that money on.