A Realistic Approach Is Required For VGK At Trade Deadline

(Photograph Credit score: SinBin.vegas Photographer Brandon Andreasen)

Cup or Bust.

That’s how the Golden Knights approached the offseason. That’s how the Golden Knights entered the season. And that’s how the Golden Knights seemed on the alternative to commerce for Jack Eichel. However that’s not how the Golden Knights needs to be wanting on the upcoming commerce deadline.

Using a three-game shedding streak, a 4-8-1 document since Mark Stone was positioned on LTIR, and a 10-12-4 run because the calendar flipped to 2022, it’s time for a real actuality examine on the place this season is headed.

The Golden Knights began final evening’s recreation lacking eight gamers from their common lineup after which noticed Max Pacioretty exit within the 2nd interval with what’s his fourth separate damage absence this season. Vegas doesn’t have a single participant who has performed in each one of many staff’s first 60 video games they usually have solely rostered the identical lineup in consecutive video games on six events this yr.

Well being is clearly the best concern for this staff and irrespective of how optimistic an individual needs to be, it appears inevitable that the 2021-22 Golden Knights are by no means going to be working at full power.

So, that brings us to the gamers which are on the ice. Fairly frankly, they appear nothing like a Stanley Cup contender. Heck, they don’t even appear like a staff that belongs within the playoffs. Injured or not, you probably have professional Stanley Cup aspirations, you’ll be able to’t spend two months getting waxed by professional playoff groups whereas taking part in 1-goal video games, that you simply’re typically on the flawed aspect of, in opposition to groups vying for lottery balls.

Each season the Golden Knights have been in existence, they’ve been consumers on the commerce deadline. The previous 4 seasons, they’ve traded away a complete of eight picks within the first three rounds to accumulate the likes of Tomas Tatar, Mark Stone, Alec Martinez, Robin Lehner, Nick Cousins, and Mattias Janmark. This yr, they continued their shopping for streak giving up one other 1st, a 1st spherical prospect in Peyton Krebs, and Alex Tuch for Jack Eichel.

So, in complete, simply throughout the season, Vegas has despatched out:

3 Energetic Roster Gamers (Tuch, Subban, Lindberg)
2 1st Spherical Prospects (Krebs, Brannstrom)
2 1st Spherical Picks
5 2nd Spherical Picks
2 third Spherical Picks

Now because the deadline approaches, they very properly could purchase once more. However they shouldn’t, and actually, if something, they need to promote. A chilly, exhausting, sensible strategy is required at this commerce deadline.

The chilling actuality is, this staff can’t win in the event that they aren’t wholesome they usually in all probability aren’t ever going to get wholesome.

But, as we head in direction of the deadline, the “bust” in Cup or Bust nonetheless could also be on the minds of these making the choices. It’s not fantasy to imagine {that a} staff headlined by Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, and Alex Pietrangelo and supported by Max Pacioretty, Shea Theodore, Robin Lehner, William Karlsson, and Jonathan Marchessault may very well be ok to win the Stanley Cup. However, it in all probability is fantasy to imagine that staff will ever see the ice within the 2021-22 season.

This deadline, the Golden Knights entrance workplace has to play the possibilities, and people numbers say they’ve a much better probability to win subsequent yr and even the yr after than they do that yr. Sure, it would imply accepting the huge bust that this yr will symbolize, however failing to acknowledge will probably be a lot worse.

No matter could be finished to enhance the 2022-23 Golden Knights should be finished at this deadline, even when it comes as one other main blow to this yr’s staff.

It’s an opportunity to reload, retool, and reshape a roster using a interval within the NHL calendar the Golden Knights have by no means been ready to make use of to enhance the way forward for their staff.

If meaning buying and selling the expiring contracts, so be it. If it means being on the promoting finish of a blockbuster by transferring a participant who isn’t seen as a part of the longer term, do it. If it means making exhausting uncomfortable selections that can harm this yr’s staff, fantastic.

What it doesn’t imply although is giving up on this season. That glimmer of hope would possibly get a bit dimmer but when it’s a 1% probability or a .01% probability, there’s nonetheless an opportunity. The gamers and the followers can nonetheless take the insanely optimistic strategy that every thing will fall into place and this can be one more superb chapter within the story that’s the Golden Knights.

However the entrance workplace can’t take that strategy. Actuality should supersede fantasy.