The Vegas Golden Knights have already made some key changes since the NHL’s free agency period kicked off last Friday and their playes are reportedly unhappy with how things have been handled so far.
General manager Kelly McMcrimmon kicked off the day by shipping Paul Stastny to the Winnipeg Jets and followed up by sending Nate Schmidt to the Vancouver Canucks in order to clear space for Alex Pietrangelo. Well, his plan worked, but even after signing the defencemen, Vegas still has zero cap space and could very well be looking to move another piece.
And players are on edge about the whole thing, and how the organization has gone about everything.
TSN’s Frank Seravalli first reported that players were ‘unnerved’ prior to Pietrangelo signing an eight year, $61.6 million deal with the team.
While FOX Sports' Andy Strickland (who covered Pietrangelo during his time with the Blues) shared a tweet explaining that he’s heard rumblings of players being upset over how the team has dealt with free agency so far.
After signing goaltender Robin Lehner to a five year, $25 million contract, the obvious move to go for is moving Marc-Andre Fleury’s $7 million cap hit (which will run for the next two seasons), however, McCrimmon confirmed that The Flower will be one of Vegas’ goaltenders heading into training camp next season.
With Stastny and Schmidt both gone, and the team working with very little cap space, you can’t help but wonder if one of these names will be shipped before the start of next season. What we do know is that they’re clearly not happy with the lack of transparency from over the last week.
(H/T Frank Seravalli, Andy Strickland)
