NHL teams are trying to intentionally embarrass Vegas due to their cap situation

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C. Ritchie
August 1, 2022 (11:00)

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When the Vegas Golden Knights first entered the NHL via expansion in 2017, they exposed team's player and cap mismanagement to create a competitive organization from inception. Vegas at the time had the most valuable asset, cap space, and leveraged that against other teams. They brokered trades with teams to take some of their over-priced players off their hands in exchange for draft picks. Now, one player agent believes teams are now sending a message to the Golden Knights via trade due to their own cap mismanagement.

It's no secret that player agent Allan Walsh has not gotten along with the Vegas Golden Knights management team. Vegas traded away two of his biggest clients Marc-Andre Fleury and Max Pacioretty for next to nothing. Walsh believes in the case of the Pacioretty trade, the Carolina Hurricanes deliberately sent a message to the Golden Knights when they only received «future considerations» in the trade.

So Carolina probably just sat there and said, you know what, we'll take the contract we'll take it. We want the player. We like the player. You know, we can make 7 million work, but you're going them to us for free. And I mean, you gotta imagine there was a little bit of a message being delivered here. Could it have been a seventh round pick or a sixth round pick? I think Carolina intentionally said we'll do this, but we're going to make it future considerations because it kind of embarrassed Vegas to have to do that and in many ways exposed their cap mismanagement. And there were several other GMs along the way that commented to me how they thought the way that trade was structured was intentional on Carolina's part.

In the first couple years of Vegas' existence, they looked like geniuses the way they took advantage of other teams cap situation and mismanagement of players. Now it looks like the tables have turned.