The Vegas Golden Knights lost Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final on June 14, and as soon as the champagne dried in the visitors’ dressing room at T-Mobile Arena, the NHL offseason was in full swing. Despite their run to the Final, change would inevitably roll through the desert like a late-evening thunderstorm, ultimately changing the direction of the Golden Knights' future. In one of her latest pieces, Sara Civian from Bleacher Report came up with one word to describe all 32 NHL teams’ offseason, settling on “consequential" for Vegas.
What has happened to the Golden Knights this offseason that would be considered consequential?
Only one player in franchise history has scored more than 35 goals in a season twice: Pavel Dorofeyev, and now he’s gone, traded to the New York Rangers so Vegas could avoid paying the 25-year-old a monster contract. The Golden Knights picked up three draft picks in the exchange, two in 2026 and one coming up in 2028, but will now miss the 92 goals he scored over the past three and a half seasons. One could ask, why didn’t the Golden Knights offer him an extension? Well, because with limited cap space, the team needed to extend defenseman Rasmus Andersson, which they did for $59 million over seven years.
Now, it’s unfair to compare an up-and-coming star (Dorofeyev) to a 10-year veteran like Andersson. Still, Vegas wanted experience on the backend, sacrificing the future for a player who has a total of 64 career goals and a minus-11 rating. Both players made an impact in the Stanley Cup playoffs, although Dorofeyev was more instrumental with 12 goals in 22 games, including leading all playoff players with 58 shots on goal. Although the jury will be out on this move for quite some time, the reality is that this is the course the organization took with its limited cap space.
Why did the Golden Knights change coaches?
Late in the season, the Vegas executive fired Stanley Cup-winning coach Bruce Cassidy, bringing in former Stanley Cup winner John Tortorella to rally the troops and get to the Final. The experiment worked for a couple of months, but as soon as the gear was in the washer, Tortorella packed up his office and was headed back into retirement. Consequently, he made some questionable decisions during the playoff run that hurt the Golden Knights in the heat of the moment, and then at the 2026 Draft, where the club lost a second-round pick because of their former coach’s actions.
Now, Vegas will be led by Ryan Craig, who has never coached at the NHL level and is taking the reins of a Cup-or-bust roster. Moreover, this year’s roster has plenty of question marks up and down the lineup, including what can fans expect from captain Mark Stone and Original Misfit William Karlsson, both in the final years of their current deals. Until Alex Pietrangelo heads back onto LTIR, the Golden Knights head into training camp $6.8 million over the cap, but will get space when the veteran’s contract is moved off the books.
Looking ahead to next summer, Vegas is projected to have over $35 million in cap space. Still, if Kelly McCrimmon plans to keep Stone and Karlsson while securing Carter Hart to a new deal, those three salaries could eat up to $20 million of that new space, leaving not a lot of room to fill in the gaps.
Civian’s assessment of the Golden Knights’ offseason is accurate because, for the first time in recent memory, the reigning Western Conference champions have significant questions surrounding the organization as they prepare for a new season. Considering the talent in the lineup, missing the playoffs for just the second time in history isn’t an option, but teams in the division are catching up. They are closing the gap between a team that used to win over 40 games a season and the one that limped to the finish line with 39 last year.
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