The salary cap used to be something of a minor nuisance to the Vegas Golden Knights. The combination of their insatiable desire to win as soon as they dropped out of the expansion womb, and the no income tax state of Nevada, meant whatever the Knights wanted, they got. From a team of misfits to then acquiring Mark Stone, Jack Eichel, Noah Hanafin, Tomas Hertl, Alex Pietrangelo, and one or two others essentially made Vegas a bacchanalia of hockey talent, to go with the bacchanalia of the rest of the place.
The playoff salary cap that is being introduced this spring may have had the Florida Panthers as the headline, but the Knights of the previous few years were certainly a supporting player. This time around, it may keep an integral player of their one Cup-winning squad from returning to the ice this season.
Alex Pientrangelo’s hips are made of graham crackers at this point. It is likely he won’t play this season, and the odds that he doesn’t play again aren’t all that much lower. Turning 36 in January, with serious injury issues, it’s a pretty jagged road for a player to return to the ice from all that. The Knights are basically counting on Pietrangelo being in the land of wind and ghosts all season, as they’re over the salary cap exactly the amount that putting Pietrangelo on LTIR will save them on the cap. That’s their out.
Pietrangelo isn’t ruling out playing this season, however. He has chosen to not have surgery on his hips, and is rehabbing and going through physical therapy in the hopes that will improve it enough to return to play. It’s a longshot, but you’ve seen this story before.
When you saw this story in the past, say in the past 10 years, it would mean that Pietrangelo would magically step out from behind the curtain before Game 1 of the first round. It’s a play the Knights have used before, notably with the loosely connected by stickum parts of Mark Stone whenever he has to return for the playoffs .That’s when teams really started bitching about the tactic, given how annoyed they already were by the Knights and how stupid they made most GMs look by instantly vaulting themselves into the contender penthouse of the NHL.
However, this time around with the playoff salary cap, the Knights can’t pull that off, should Pietrangelo suddenly find new hips in the Cosmopolitan bathroom or something. As mentioned above, Pietrangelo’s LTIR status is all that’s going to get this Knights team cap-compliant for the season. His return would put them over.
Which sets up a possible sticky situation, one Edmonton went through with Evander Kane last spring, where an injured player wants to return but for cap reasons, their team would rather they park it until the playoffs. Kane wasn’t exactly thrilled about it, but then again he’s rarely thrilled about anything.
Is there a way Pietrangelo could be squeezed in? Sure. Something could fall off Stone again, and if he couldn’t dress then the Knights could swap out Stone’s salary for Pietrangelo’s. Though obviously, without even a partial-strength Stone, making a long playoff run gets trickier for the Knights. Same goes for any injury to Shea Theodore or Hanafin.
Failing that, perhaps the Knights could just scratch a highly-paid forward to fit in Pietrangelo? Like a William Karlsson, if his decline were to continue? How would that go over in the dressing room? Other than that, the options are scant.
It’s unlikely to come about, and Pietrangelo is probably enough of a good soldier to put the Knights in this spot. But it is a dot on the horizon, one the Knights probably never want to see up close.
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