And that is time for the Vegas Golden Knights on their ninth trade deadline season.
Considering the team acquired defenseman Rasmus Andersson in January, maybe a big move was a little too far-fetched. However, the Golden Knights finished the deadline with forwards Cole Smith and Nic Dowd as the major additions, while forward Cole Reinhardt was claimed by the Florida Panthers on waivers. While some were expecting bigger moves, the Golden Knights ultimately felt confident in their group enough to not make any major modifications.
Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon spoke before Friday’s game against the Minnesota Wild, where he made some insights onto his decision-making process.
Forward group improvements
The clear message from the Golden Knights in their moves was to tweak their bottom six, and that was taken care of at this deadline.
Smith and Dowd both profile as defensive-minded forwards who can hit, block shots and match up favorably against opposing top lines. Both are also key penalty killers, which can keep the pressure off of the likes of Jack Eichel and Mitch Marner and keep them fresh later in games. With these two presumably serving as fourth-line fixtures for the rest of the season, the Golden Knights are hoping they can rely on their new players to get the job done defensively.
“You'll see Colton Sissons playing on the right side with that line. I think that that's a line that when you look at Dowd, 87% of his starts last year in the D-zone. Smith, I believe, 76% of his starts are in the D-zone. It gives Bruce a lot more flexibility in terms of how he deploys his forward group. So these are defensive players, but I think this is going to really improve our forward group overall,” said McCrimmon.
Trusting health
Another point that was made during McCrimmon’s statements was how the Golden Knights are observing the health of their own players.
Brett Howden is expected to be back on Sunday, putting Vegas ever so closer to a full lineup. The statuses of Mark Stone and William Karlsson was a bit more up in the air, but McCrimmon did expect both to be back at some point, with Karlsson avoiding season-ending long-term injured reserve.
“We've had issues with our health that we think are going to be improving,” said McCrimmon during his opening statements.
“Mark Stone remains day to day, so he'll be out of our lineup here for a little bit. Carter Hart remains week to week. William Karlsson is on LTIR, and he will be kept alive. We're not putting him on season ending LTIR; he'll return at some point in the playoffs. We'll have to have some success, or some level of success in the playoffs for him to play again, but because of the value he has to our team, that's how we've chose to handle that.”
Goaltending standing pat
Something that surprised many Golden Knights fans was the lack of a goaltender coming into the organization.
With Adin Hill’s struggles and Akira Schmid being untested with a starting workload, Vegas was penciled in as a contender in need of a netminder. Despite being linked to the likes of Jordan Binnington and Sergei Bobrovsky, McCrimmon expressed confidence in his current group to get the job done.
“I would say to you specifically with the goaltending, our goaltending can be much better, but I like our goalies,” McCrimmon said in response to the goaltending question.
“Adin Hill missed 39 games, got in a little bit of a groove going into the break, then you're shut down again fot the Olympic break. I was encouraged by what I saw in Detroit, you know, I thought he hung in there and helped our team win that night. So, yeah, I think that Adin is a good goalie… Carter Hart was showing real promise till he was injured. Now he's been out of the lineup, you know, two months, and Akira Schmid, to his credit, has steadily been a really important part of our team. So we'll march forward with three goaltenders.”
