Latest On The Golden Knights’ Pending UFAs

The Golden Knights won’t be able to re-sign most of their pending unrestricted free agents with a looming salary cap crunch, and they’ve already gone through the process of elimination on who to prioritize. The team has informed forwards Michael Amadio, William Carrier and Anthony Mantha that they won’t be offered extensions before July 1, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reported yesterday. All three will hit the UFA market.

Amadio is a tough loss after being arguably their most cost-effective depth scorer over the past three seasons. After being claimed off waivers from the Maple Leafs early in the 2021-22 campaign, he enjoyed the best run of his career in Sin City. The 28-year-old has played nearly 200 regular-season games in a Vegas uniform, posting 41 goals and 72 points in less than 13 minutes of ice time per game. He’s also been quite the playoff performer, posting 10 points in 16 games en route to their Stanley Cup win in 2023 and logging a goal and an assist in their first-round elimination against the Stars this year. Amadio has made the league minimum salary each season, but he could likely land close to $3MM annually this summer.

Carrier, 29, is an original Golden Knight. Selected from the Sabres in the 2017 expansion draft, the Québec native has been a serviceable fourth-line winger, and his 372 appearances rank sixth in franchise history. He struggled with injuries this season, limited to eight points in 39 games, but had a career-high 16 goals in 56 games the year before. Carrier has shining career possession numbers at even strength – a 53.6 CF% and a 55.9 xGF% – making him one of the better two-way options in the entire league for his role.

He likely won’t land much of an increase, if any, on his expiring $1.4MM cap hit. Still, Vegas general manager Kelly McCrimmon needs every inch of flexibility possible to keep Jonathan Marchessault and Chandler Stephenson from heading to market.

Giving up a pair of draft picks for Mantha at the trade deadline may have been a rare ill-advised move from McCrimmon. The 29-year-old winger seemed to fit nicely into their top nine down the stretch in the regular season, posting three goals and 10 points in 18 games. However, he fell out of the lineup once Tomáš Hertl and Mark Stone were ready to return from their injuries and only played in three of their seven playoff games against Dallas without recording a point. He’d been making an average of $5.7MM annually for the past four years on a deal signed by Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman in the 2020 offseason, and while he won’t earn that much again on his next deal, he might get close after his first 20-goal season since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Golden Knights are also unlikely to re-sign veteran defenseman Alec Martinez, who likely wouldn’t have been in their opening night lineup next season after Noah Hanifin’s acquisition. But they haven’t informed him of anything like the others, Pagnotta said, and it’s unclear if he’ll test the market in July. After winning the Cup with Vegas last year and twice with the Kings in the early 2010s, the 36-year-old is “evaluating his options” as the end of his career draws closer.

And while Marchessault is the higher-priority extension target, McCrimmon hasn’t closed the door on a Stephenson re-signing. Pagnotta reports he’ll speak to Stephenson’s camp in the next two weeks to gauge his price. Still, if he heads to market, he’ll have plenty of suitors as the second-best center potentially available after Elias Lindholm. As such, his market value could very well eclipse a $6MM AAV – a prohibitively expensive figure for Vegas unless significant cap-cutting trades are made.