It’s the perfect move for a Golden Knights team that not only always makes winning a priority, but also always finds a way to land the next big star no matter what its salary cap situation looks like. They always find a way. It’s almost as if the salary cap is just a suggestion for them and not something that limits their spending.
If there is a big-name player available, you can be sure the Golden Knights are going to be in on them and probably get them.
They managed to pull it off in recent years with the likes of Mark Stone, Jack Eichel, Alex Pietrangelo, Tomas Hertl and Noah Hanifin. They did it again here with Marner. And the manner in which all came together for them was vintage Golden Knights magic.
For one, adding an elite-scoring winger was a massive need for the Golden Knights entering the offseason, and Marner was by far the best one available.
Second, they were able to get a rival team — in this case, Nashville — to take a player that was about to get overpaid (defenseman Nicolas Hague) off of their hands to shed some salary.
By trading Roy to Toronto as part of the sign-and-trade, they also trimmed away an additional $3M.
But the biggest part of the sequence was Pietrangelo, who is still owed $8.8M per year over the next two years, stepping away from hockey due to a hip issue that may end his career. By putting his contract on LTIR, combined with the departures of Hague and Roy, the Golden Knights suddenly had the salary cap space available to add the top free agent on the market.
It always seems to work out this way for the Golden Knights, whether by some stroke of good luck or by design.
It will most likely happen again when it comes time to re-sign Eichel to a new contract at some point over the year.
As for what it means from a hockey standpoint, Marner is a huge add because he is one of the best playmakers and point-producers in the league while also playing a better defensive game than he sometimes gets credit for. The question is going to be whether or not he can translate that success over to the postseason and in big games, something that was a constant problem for him during his time with the Maple Leafs. He also seemed to become the scapegoat for Toronto’s continued failures in the playoffs.
Maybe getting a fresh start away from the pressure cooker that is the Toronto hockey market will help him. Maybe playing for a franchise that has actually won something and found postseason success in this era will also give him a boost.
It will be fascinating to watch it all play out over the next few years. Vegas not only has a track record of getting the big-name stars, it also has a track record for finding success with them.