Will the Golden Knights be able to move on from Adin Hill?
The Vegas Golden Knights are heading straight from falling in the Stanley Cup Final to dealing with a salary cap crunch as they look to get back to the top of the mountain in the NHL next season.
General manager Kelly McCrimmon has limited salary cap space with which to accommodate new contracts for pending restricted free agent winger Pavel Dorofeyev and pending unrestricted free agent defenseman Rasmus Andersson.
One obvious move would be to trade Adin Hill and his onerous contract, which has five years left at a salary cap hit of $6.25 million. Hill was excellent in bringing the Stanley Cup to Vegas in 2023, but his play has declined sharply in the years since.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed whether or not McCrimmon will be able to move on from Hill in a way that is palatable to the direction of the team.
Tyler Yaremchuk: That brings us to the trade market and teams who could be looking to make a big splash, and the one name that’s been thrown around a lot because he sat on the bench for their entire run to the Stanley Cup Final is Adin Hill in Vegas. He comes with a massive contract, $6.25 million and he’s got five more years left on that bad boy. Like Bobrovsky, he’s coming off a down season savee percentage wise. Carter Hart seems to have grabbed the crease, and Vegas is in cap hell, so it makes sense that they could be looking to offload Adin Hill at some point. But as I look around and I look at the cap situation, I go, well, it’s easy to say you want to offload Adin Hill. Hutts, I don’t know if they’re going to, like honestly, I don’t know if they’re going to be able to.
Carter Hutton: That’s my biggest takeaway too is, is how do you do it with that number with five years left? And I know he has that winning pedigree… but it gives me Matt Murray vibes. It gives me the vibe of winning a Stanley Cup. You kind of get that pedigree that follows you around for a long time. You get the contract based on that, and now you haven’t been able to produce. And my concern for Adin Hill is where does he go, and who takes on that money? And I think there’s in a world where we talk about this, everyone’s like, well, they can just move Adin Hill’s contract. Who the hell’s taking that on? I think that’s the biggest question mark in a down year. Well, my other concern now about the Vegas Golden Knights is, we looked at Carter’s Hart Stanley Cup Final where he had to play a ton of games in a row. I still think you kind of need Adin Hill, and you’re going to have to make some adjustments because… Is Carter Hart a 55, 60 game goalie? I don’t know. I don’t know if he is. And I think he played very well. I just don’t know if the pressure of that situation and playing so many games really got to him. So for Adin Hill, a big question mark in Vegas because you don’t want to have a guy making that kind of money sitting on the bench. I just don’t know where he goes if unless someone’s taking money off you for it.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…