At the beginning of the month, Golden Knights winger Mark Stone underwent back surgery with no timetable for his return. That was certainly a big blow as the captain has 38 points in 43 games so far this season. Now, the team has made the anticipated move as CapFriendly reports (Twitter link) that they’ve placed the veteran on LTIR. In doing so, Vegas now has an extra $9.5M in spending room while their LTIR pool now eclipses $23.5M with Shea Weber, Robin Lehner, and Nolan Patrick also on there. They’ve already used $750K of that with today’s emergency recall of goaltender Michael Hutchinson.
With the trade deadline now less than two weeks away, this gives Vegas a boost in what they’re allowed to spend; while many of the other contenders are in either dollar-in, dollar-out situations or have limited flexibility, the options that the Golden Knights now have are much more plentiful. Of course, going that route will come with some risks as well. If GM Kelly McCrimmon goes and spends that money, Stone likely won’t be able to come back for the rest of the season as Vegas would have to get back into compliance before they could activate him. The only way that could happen in that situation is if more players are out long-term and have high enough cap hits to offset Stone’s AAV.
Stone was actually in this same situation last year. He was dealing with a back injury and went on LTIR with Vegas tap-dancing around the LTIR limit all season long; he was only able to return when three regular veterans landed on there late in the year. It’s too early to say if that could be an option this time around as he remains out indefinitely. But in the meantime, the Golden Knights now have considerably more options heading into the trade deadline than they did a month ago when Stone was still in the lineup.
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