The Vegas Golden Knights could find a way to re-sign hallmark winger Jonathan Marchessault, per David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period a recent NHL Now segment (Twitter link). Pagnotta shared that both sides have mutual interest in signing a new deal, though Vegas’ slim cap space has kept the team from engaging in any contract talks just yet. Marchessault spoke about these negotiations at the World Series of Poker, telling the Las Vegas Review, “They said they were interested to definitely re-sign me and we’ll see. Technically they have time until June 30, so we’ll see how it goes.”
Marchessault recently concluded a six-year, $30MM contract signed with Vegas in January of 2018. He earned the deal in the midst of a breakout season with the inagural Golden Knights, scoring 27 goals and 75 points in 77 games. The new extension marked Marchessault’s first time earning a salary north of $1.0MM and he’s only become more valuable, posting 165 goals and 342 points across the 437 games he played over the course of the deal. That includes Marchessault’s career-high 42 goals this season, making him just the second Golden Knight to hit the 40-goal mark alongside William Karlsson’s breakout 2017-18 campaign.
Marchessault has managed the strong scoring while serving a stout role on Vegas’ second line – averaging roughly 17 minutes of ice time in six of his last seven seasons. His modest spot in the lineup has been supplemented by a commanding role on the team’s powerplay, with no other Golden Knight playing more power-play minutes than Marchessault since 2018. And he’s vindicated the minutes, scoring 36 power-play goals and 87 points in a collective 1121 minutes.
Marchessault’s ability to offer consistent goal-scoring from the second line has been a big factor in Vegas’ recent lineup creativity. He’s fully carved out his role in Vegas and will be hard to replace should he enter free agency. But that could be the ultimate outcome, as the Golden Knights currently boast just $897.5K in cap space. They could look into trimming their cap hit on the trade market or through LTIR relief, per Pagnotta, though they’ll likely need to make a series of to afford Marchessault’s next deal.
The same factors that’s led Vegas to their cap constraints are likely also what’s kept them from engaging Marchessault in talks of an extension up to this point. The veteran winger told the Las Vegas Review that he expressed interest to Vegas about signing an extension last summer – sharing, “I asked last summer. I was like, ‘You know what? I would rather do it in the summer before the season.’ And they said they’re not ready to do that…”
The Golden Knights instead spent the season getting as close to the salary cap as they could, even using lucrative trading to acquire Noah Hanifin’s contract at just 25 percent of its original cap hit and even getting the San Jose Sharks to retain 17 percent of Tomas Hertl’s cap hit. Timely LTIR relief helped them make the moves without exceeding the salary cap, though Vegas is now paying for the antics with a stressful summer ahead. Pagnotta added that pending free agents William Carrier, Michael Amadio, and Anthony Mantha are each expected to leave the Golden Knights for free agency.
Carrier is notably an original Golden Knight, with the Buffalo Sabres sending Vegas a sixth-round draft pick to ensure they’d select him in the 2017 Expansion Draft. He’s since played in 372 games across seven seasons with Vegas – totaling 53 goals, 99 points, and 183 penalty minutes while averaging just 10:32 in ice time.
Losing the trio of Carrier, Amadio, and Mantha will leave notable holes in the Golden Knights’ bottom-six. With such little money to go around – especially if they re-sign Marchessault – the Golden Knights are likely hoping those holes can be filled by top young players like Pavel Dorofeyev, Brendan Brisson, and Grigori Denisenko.
It’ll get sorted when Mark Stone’s doctor returns from vacation.
Vegas, you’re on the verge of your true ‘welcome to the NHL’ moment…
No cap space, no draft picks, and one of the lowest ranked prospect pools…
At least you have a banner in the rafters you can enjoy from here-out.
Cheers….
You and your clan have been making the cap space claim since season two and you have wrong each time.
While I may live in Vegas/Henderson, I am not a VGK fan, ergo, not part of that ‘clan’.
VGK’s cap shenanigans may have run their course as many of their top players are aging-out, with few on the depth chart to help pull the weight once they’re no longer serviceable.
Cheers.
Aka Vegas is hoping someone will bail them out either it be the NHL or another team with some kind of sign and trade back to them! They can fly that teams GM into Vegas and ya know…….cough cough…….what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas to deal the deal!
If im not mistaken there is a rule where a player cant sign as a free agent and be traded right away, im not sure if its 1 full season/year or to the trade deadline after the signing
Yeah and I’m hoping to find a detached, single-family home for under $200k with 1% interest. We don’t always get what we want, Vegas.
Sold several at 4% interest. Those days are gone with Bidenflation………..
It’s not inflation, it’s a failing system of capitalism that has been living on borrowed time for decades, and now the crows are coming home to nest. We have a housing market being hoarded by corporations with unfathomable amounts of money, profiting off the hard work of people who actually have real jobs. We have loser speculators treating homes like poker chips and putting people on the street to make an extra buck. You can elect Biden, or Trump, or Mike Milbury, and they’re all the same BS. The entire system is built to bleed the working man dry for the benefit of do-nothing losers faceciously calling themselves “job creators” and “innovators”. None of us win under neoliberalism.
Hey, let’s try socialism!
When you print 8 trillion dollars like we did (CARES Act), inflation is inevitable.
Right, but printing money like that is a hallmark of capitalism; generating perpetual growth by living on borrowed time. Printing more money is supposed to be economic stimulus, but it devalues the dollar; if the working class owns something, devalue what they own. If they unionize to gain fair wages, degrade the value of the wages. Keep the rich, rich. This is entirely the goal of capitalist economics. You are seeing the intended result of 40 years of neoliberalism.
Socialist countries have higher tax rates, our career politicians would love that, “free healthcare” it all comes out of these extra taxes too, nothing is free something we have to remember, just buy a megamillions ticket every week and just pray lol
Taxes actually accomplish things though… In theory, anyway. They should pay for roads, healthcare, the military, schools, all that stuff. Part of the problem with taxes in America is an overreliance on private contractors who regularly fleece the public coin purse with inadequate services rendered, over-charging, or just straight up unethical backroom deals (see: public subsidy of private industry). High taxes are not necessarily a bad thing; high taxes paired with poor fiscal management is a recipe for disaster.
Because King Franklin got rid of the gold standard.
Printing money is a hallmark of socialist economics, not free market ones. And the consequences are always the same: a devalued currency and high inflation.
Inflation is not a socialist economic tool by any means. When you’ve historically seen it in countries like Venezuela, it’s because the country’s GDP – the actual production they are doing – is low and the government is desperate to cover shortfalls with thin margins. However, it’s worth noting that economic collapses in many of these countries are not due directly to socialist economic policies, but rather because of foreign interfere and trade restrictions imposed upon them (the United States does this very, very frequently on a global scale to shut down governments they don’t like), or because of government corruption. But many countries – Russia and Bulgaria, as two examples – actually experienced rapid inflation AFTER their communist regimes fell apart.
Generally speaking, I find Americans have an extremely poor understanding of what socialism actually is due to a deliberate media campaign to misrepresent it. Socialism, in its purest form, is a system of economics where money generated by the people, benefits the people. No hoarding by the rich, no underpayment of workers, and a strong social safety net. Things like public healthcare and no-cost education are fundamentally socialist concepts. Your boss paying you $20 for an hour of labour that earns him $250… That’s capitalism.
Socialism in “its purest form”, never happens because it always ends up being a dictatorship. So keep dreaming of that utopian society and take that dream to your grave and spare the world.
Another American myth. Talk to anyone who lived in Yugoslavia before NATO bombed it to hell, and they’ll tell you how good life used to be. Many (not all) of the people of the former Soviet will say the same.
And it’s not as though Americans have true democracy either, with their system of two nearly identical parties that pretend to combat each other in a system where only the two of them are legally allowed to hold power at any given time.
America is not now nor ever has been a “Democracy.” It is a Constitutional Republic. Most provable by the Electoral College which allows the less populous states and their citizens the same rights as those one-party states like California, Illinois and New York. Where the big cities can force the state to vote contrary to many of the counties in that state
Pyramid, I have no idea what books on economics you’ve read, but you really need better reading material. Socialist governments print money to buy off voting blocs to put and keep them in power. Wiping out billions in student loan debt is a similar recent example of this.
Oh, you mean the business where 500,000 people in the one-party state of Wyoming have as much sway as forty MILLION in California? Yep, you’re right: that’s not very democratic.
So tell me, by the bye: why do you think that people in cities ought to count for less than people outside of cities? (Other than, of course, they tend to vote other than your political preference.)
Never understood why people think land should get more voting power than people.
The reason why communism doesn’t work is because if forces workers to SHARE the results of their work with strangers (not family members of friends). Most people don’t want to share the results of their work with strangers. When forced to share, they get demotivated and stop working hard. The Soviet Union worked when it was run like a prison camp. Liberalization allowed people to stop working and get away with it. The system quickly collapsed as a result.
Socialism is a capitalism with sharing, the extent of which depends on the degree of “socialization”. The sharing demotivates people, making the system inefficient.
At some point in the future people might become more willing to share than they are today. When it happens, socialism could become just as efficient as capitalism. Not today though.
HA HA Wyoming has what 3 electoral votes to CA’s 40 (and maybe shrinking) HA HA !!!!!
Uh, because this is the United States, with the emphasis on states. Simple concept and great foresight by the founders to avoid the mob rule that you yearn for.
They got their cup. I can’t imagine there’s much left to milk anymore. This years first round exit had to have hurt ownership big time. Let’s see what other BS they can pull off.
I’m ready for this team to live in the dumpster for a while
One might have thought, actually, that Marchessault’s “breakout season” was him scoring 30 for Florida.