Vegas Golden Knights: A (very) early assessment of the Nikita Gusev trade

Should the Knights have traded Gusev?

We all know the reason the Vegas Golden Knights traded Nikita Gusev was because they were in salary cap hell and didn’t want to shed further depth players to create extra cap space after already losing the likes of Colin Miller, Erik Haula and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare.

The Knights liked Gusev’s upside and wanted to keep him but refused to pay over the odds for a player that had never stepped foot in an NHL rink, so instead bit the bullet and received a third round pick in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft and a second round pick in the 2021 Draft for their asset.

Overall, the return wasn’t bad all all for the Golden Knights but it did weaken their secondary scoring.

And, looking back at the trade a few months later, you can make a strong argument that Gusev would have helped bolster Vegas’ secondary scoring, which has almost been nonexistent.

Brandon Pirri and Valentin Zykov, who both slotted in on the third line on the left wing, a role Gusev would have assumed, have stunk to put it bluntly.

Zykov is currently serving a 20-game suspension for violating the terms of the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program, while Brandon Pirri was sent down to the AHL over the weekend after scoring just one goal in 11 games in the NHL.

So you could say that the Knights maybe would have been in a better spot had they kept Gusev, given that he would have been playing on a line with better players and, thus, put in better situations.

But, here’s a couple of things to remember, Alex Tuch has been missing from the third line for most of the year due to injury while Cody Eakin has not been himself and is currently a -5 with five points (one goal, four assists) through 18 games.

And, you could make the argument that the Golden Knights would have been better served in keeping hold of Erika Haula instead when it comes to reliable secondary scoring.