"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.
