NHL teams unhappy the Golden Knights are pulling a TBL Kucherov move
Ever since the trade on November 4th all eyes have been on the Vegas Golden Knights after acquiring Jack Eichel in a trade with the Buffalo sabres:
"Traded from Buffalo Sabres with conditional round 3 pick in the 2023 draft to Vegas Golden Knights for Alex Tuch, Peyton Krebs, conditional round 1 pick in the 2022 draft and conditional round 2 pick in the 2023 draft" - Per Hockeydb.com
While this trade finally got the Golden Knights the first line center they have desperately needed, it put a team that was up against the cap, far over the salary cap adding the $10,000,000 salary of Eichel. So many have wondered how they planned to fit him in once he was ready to return from surgery. Well, we found out our answer.
If everyone recalls, after the Tampa Bay Lightning won the 2020 COVID Stanley Cup, they were going to be in a cap situation with a few players needing to be resigned. Well, "luckily" Kucherov required surgery and missed the entire season, freeing up the $9,500,000 the team needed to resign its players. Now what upset the majority of the fan base was, he remained on LTIR for the entire season and just happened to be ready for game 1 of the playoffs, which put the team $17,000,000 over the cap hit, thus leading to a back-to-back Stanley cup victory.
Now, are we seeing a similar scenario with the Golden Knights about to take place? With Eichel coming off LTIR for tonight's game against the Avalanche, the team needed to free up some cap space, and it just so happens, the team today placed Mark Stone on LTIR so free up just that.
Stone has been dealing with an injury for the majority of the season, so this article is not accusing the Knights of him "faking an injury" but the timing is definitely not ideal and it is causing other NHL franchises to ask questions.
Chris Johnston mentioned on last nights Insider Trading:
«There was certainly some grumbling from rival teams. I think that's to be expected in a case like this when executives say that it makes a mockery of the system. But optics aside, I don't think there's a whole lot the National Hockey League can do in this case other than require documentation of a back injury to Golden Knights forward Mark Stone. It's a back injury that put him on the long-term injury reserve and sources insist it is a legitimate injury, so it won't be difficult for the Golden Knights to produce that kind of documentation.»
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