With Mark Stone out, could Vegas take a swing at Patrick Kane?
On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live, hosts Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discussed the Las Vegas Golden Knights’ trade prospects going into All-Star weekend.
Seravalli and Yaremchuk reviewed ways that the Golden Knights might replace the impact of injured captain Mark Stone, and if Stone’s shelved cap hit changes their deadline strategy to include this season’s most sought-after expiring contract.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Our inbox question today is about Mark Stone, he underwent surgery and there’s a chance the Golden Knights will put him on LTIR for the rest of the regular season, so the question is: if Stone is on LTIR who is the dream deadline target for the Golden Knights?
Frank Seravalli: The Golden Knights said he is going to be out indefinitely and that they expect him to make a full recovery but kind of played coy about that. When is that full recovery, is it before the regular season’s done, is it sometime during the playoffs, or is it next season? Either way, I think the Golden Knights have a prime opportunity to keep Mark Stone and his back injury at least out until the playoffs if they want to. That would open up $9.25 million for the team that likes to go after it like no other in the NHL. They are hungry to win, and the guy for me, also a right winger with lots of glitz and glamor, is Patrick Kane.
Tyler Yaremchuk: 100 percent.
Frank Seravalli: He just makes sense, Jack Eichel and Patrick Kane, maybe the best American-born players together on a line, could you imagine the magic? And the glitter, showtime in Vegas. It just makes sense.
Tyler Yaremchuk: So much sense, he’s actually the only name I have written down. It just feels like a Vegas kind of acquisition when you think back to all the players they’ve picked up. Patrick Kane is the guy, Patrick Kane is the fit, and I would imagine he’d be open to going there as well.
Frank Seravalli: I would think so but here’s the thing, he’s probably not a re-sign candidate. Unless Stone is out for way longer, and we don’t believe that that’s the case, I don’t know how you’d be able to fit him in. Here’s where it gets really interesting for Vegas, you take Kane’s $10.5 million salary and chop it in half with Chicago retaining salary, and you’d still have some change to go out and add a defenseman. We’d talked about that as their top deadline objective before this Stone injury.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Fascinating stuff, it’d be something and that Pacific Division would get really interesting if Vegas could add a piece like Patrick Kane.
You can watch the whole episode here…