The Vegas Golden Knights needed to dump salary to get to the cap and were forced to make a tough decision.
The offseason is here, and a scorching summer is underway in Las Vegas. As the temperatures climb, the Golden Knights have some work to do to prepare for the 2019-20 regular season. The team front office also faces burning hot decisions with the salary cap.
The Golden Knights already had to make one trade that sent fan favorite Erik Haula to the Carolina Hurricanes. However, Vegas still needed more cap space to sign their restricted free agents and to potentially maneuver around on July 1st when unrestricted free agency opens. Unfortunately, the Golden Knights had to make a move that sent one of their best puck-moving defenseman out east.
On Friday afternoon, the Golden Knights traded Colin Miller to the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for a second-round pick in 2021 and a fifth-round pick in 2022. President of hockey operations, George McPhee, had no other choice but to deal away one of his best offensive defenseman for virtually nothing that can help his team next season.
If you’re a Golden Knights fan, you have to be furious. There’s no way that Colin Miller should be going for that low of a price. But when the salary cap comes into play, you have to bite the bullet.
Vegas will miss Miller and his offensive prowess on the blue line. In 145 combined games with the Golden Knights, the Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario native, finished his tenure with 13 goals, 57 assists, and 70 points. But what the Golden Knights will miss the most out of the 26-year old is that he’s right-handed.
I know what you’re thinking, why is that so important? As it stands right now, the Golden Knights do not have a right-handed defenseman on their roster, and that’s alarming. Nate Schmidt, Shea Theodore, Brayden McNabb, Nick Holden, and Jon Merrill are all left-handed. It’s going to be awfully tough to break out of the defensive zone without having a healthy mix of lefty and righty defensemen.
With all that said, McPhee did the right thing. The Golden Knights didn’t want to move a player from their core such as Jonathan Marchessault or a player that can help them win now in Paul Stastny. This deal helps them by signing a player with promise in Nikita Gusev and maybe even Malcolm Subban.
And by making this trade, the Golden Knights stockpiled two more draft picks to their pool in the future. In the next two years, Vegas has six draft picks in the first two rounds. We know what happened the last time the Golden Knights had that many picks in the first two rounds.
McPhee flipped those picks and prospects in exchange for prolific scorers Max Pacioretty and Mark Stone in seperate deals. I wouldn’t expect that next time around as the Golden Knights will be tight up against the cap with not a ton of wiggle room.
All in all, it’s tough to see Colin Miller leave Vegas because it really looked like he found his niche in the desert. It’s hard to say if McPhee has one more trade he has to make. We might not find that out till the last day of training camp. But what’s important right now is the Vegas Golden Knights are in a better financial situation than they were 24 hours ago.