Better luck next year: Expect more big changes for the Vegas Golden Knights

It will probably be a chaotic offseason.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be officially eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Vegas Golden Knights.

The Vegas Golden Knights have made themselves one of the most hated teams in hockey for their ability — and willingness — to utilize every possible loophole in the NHL’s salary cap to build the best team possible.

Nobody is better at maximizing their salary cap space and using it to their advantage to go all in every single season than them.

This season might have been their wildest roster management yet.

Thanks to their LTIR usage — including the year trip for forward Mark Stone — the Golden Knights were able to take a Stanley Cup winning roster that was already capped out, and then add three of the biggest trade deadline additions in the league. They traded for forwards Anthony Mantha and Tomas Hertl, while also adding defenseman Noah Hanifin.

Hertl is already signed long-term, while Hanifin, a pending UFA at the time of his acquisition, was the latest player to get a significant long-term contract extension with the team.

For the Golden Knights and their fans, it was masterful roster and salary cap management and the type of thing you want to see an ownership and front office do to build a winner.

There was nothing technically against the rules, and they are far from the only team to utilize that approach.

They simply do it bigger and better than everybody else.

It also raised the stakes for the players on the ice and created some sky-high expectations going into the playoffs. The roster was already great on paper, and they were not only getting everybody back healthy they had three major additions coming in to help put them over the top again.

It just didn’t work out the way they had hoped as they blew a 2-0 series lead and were ultimately eliminated by the Dallas Stars in seven games. Not only were they eliminated, they were pretty significantly outplayed for most of the series (even though it went the distance).

That disappointing result, combined with the team’s salary cap situation, is probably going to lead to a pretty chaotic summer in Vegas.

Let’s talk about it.