By Matt Blittner, The New York Extra/TheNYExtra.com
The chips are in the middle of the table and they’re stacked as high as Mount Everest. Now it’s time to go around the room — er, league — and see if anybody is willing to call the Golden Knights’ bluff. (Warning: this could take awhile with 31 others participating in this high stakes game).
Late last week, the Vegas Golden Knights continued to add star power at the cost of valuable depth and acquired disgruntled/injured star center, Jack Eichel from the Buffalo Sabres. Eichel, close to a point-per-game player when healthy, is set to have artificial disc replacement surgery on his neck any day now and won’t actually play for the Knights until the calendar flips to 2022. Of course, when he does return to the ice, Vegas is betting the farm he will still be the same player he was pre-injury.
Assuming for a moment Eichel indeed returns to form, will the Golden Knights’ bet actually pay off in the form of a Stanley Cup championship? I’m not so sure.
Beyond the obvious salary cap implications there are several questions as to how Eichel will mix with his presumed linemates of Mark Stone and Max Pacioretty. But there’s one question that worries me even more.
Let’s say Eichel does mesh with Stone and Pacioretty. Let’s say the Knights do manage to pull off some salary cap gymnastics. My main concern is, are the Knights too top-heavy to actually win this bet?
Think about it, the “Golden Misfits” of 2017-18 no longer exist. In their place sits a team who has gathered quite an assortment of stars but lacks quality depth. And we all know the last team standing in the playoffs is usually the one that pairs stars with quality depth to capture Lord Stanley’s Cup.
If you don’t believe me just ask the Tampa Bay Lightning, who routinely experienced playoff failures with a top-heavy approach for much of the last decade. It wasn’t until Tampa got wise and added some grinders and quality depth players that the Lightning actually survived four-rounds of playoffs to win The Stanley Cup; which they’ve now done in back-to-back years.
When the Knights entered the NHL at the start of the 2017-18 season, nobody expected them to have the season they did. And while they fell short in the Stanley Cup Final versus Washington, it was still a year to fondly remember. But since then, each year has failed to live up to the first. There was the first-round playoff exit in 2018-19, followed by consecutive third-round exits in ‘19-’20 and ‘20-’21.
As time has gone by, more of the original Knights who played key roles in the team’s early success have departed the organization. The likes of: Alex Tuch, Nate Schmidt, Erik Haula, James Neal, Marc-Andre Fleury, David Perron and Colin Miller have all said good-bye to Vegas. Sure, players like: William Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault, Reilly Smith and Shea Theodore are still around, but they’re not enough.
And who else are the Knights going to lose in order to make sure they’re cap compliant? Once everybody’s healthy they will be far enough over the salary cap that you can envision at least a couple quality players needing to be sent packing in order to comply with the salary cap. Would Smith be one of those players?
So, when Eichel comes back and presumably plays between Pacioretty and Stone, how will the team perform if that trio gets held in check during a dire playoff game?
Looking at the Rangers and Islanders as examples — this is after all a New York based publication — there have been many important playoff goals scored by players who weren’t considered stars.
The Bluehsirts don’t get to and win the Stanley Cup Final in 1994 without Stephane Matteau’s Eastern Conference Final, double-overtime, series-winner. From the 2011-12 season to the 2016-17 season, the Rangers were one of the NHL’s elite teams. But they also needed the likes of: Marian Gaborik; Marc Staal; Chris Kreider; Derick Brassard; Martin St. Louis; Kevin Hayes; Carl Hagelin; Ryan McDonagh; Derek Stepan and Mika Zibanejad to score important overtime goals in the playoffs to get as far as they did.
The Stanley Cup-winning goals for the dynasty Islanders were scored by: Bob Nystrom (1980); Wayne Merrick (1981); Mike Bossy (1982) and Mike Bossy (1983). But the Isles never win those Cups if not for the likes of: Ken Morrow; Clark Gillies; Bob Bourne; Nystrom; Denis Potvin; John Tonelli; Bryan Trottier; Merrick; and Bossy, all of whom scored key overtime winning goals during those playoff runs.
Sure, some of those names are stars or even Hall of Famers, but a fair amount were just quality players who rose to the moment. Which players will rise to the moment for Vegas should Eichel and his linemates fail?
NEW YORK’S BREWING VEZINA TROPHY RACE
Igor Shesterkin, 25, and Ilya Sorokin, 26, are the names every New York NHL fan needs to know. Both hail from Russia and both are superb goaltenders who are making quite a few headlines early this season. Might they make headlines again once the season is over and the Vezina Trophy votes are announced?
After Monday night’s 4-3 victory over the Panthers, Shesterkin boasts a 6-2-2 record to go along with a .931 SV%, a 2.37 GAA and one shutout. The GAA is a tad high thanks to two losses to Calgary that were far from his fault as the Rangers were blown off the ice in both games.
Meanwhile, Sorokin, who has handled the bulk of the Isles’ starts while Semyon Varlamov recovered from an injury, is 5-2-2 with a .939 SV%, 1.98 GAA and three shutouts.
Both rank in the Top-10 league-wide in wins, save percentage and shutouts, while Sorokin is also in the Top-10 in goals-against-average. Shesterkin is 17th.
Both are young and have yet to enter their primes. Sure, Sorokin technically is the Isles backup netminder, but that will change soon enough. And when it does, don’t be surprised if the two push each other to the point where they end up finishing First and Second in the Vezina Trophy race (in either order); not just this year, but for years to come.