At the beginning of the season, it was presumed that the Golden Knights would be closer to 10-27-2 than 27-10-2.
A 10-27-2 expansion team doesn't need to sign a 27-year-old pending UFA, even one who's enjoying a career year, to a six-year extension. A 19-18-2 franchise might consider it, but would be wise to explore trade options. But at 27-10-2, you can say that Jonathan Marchessault and the rest of the Knights have forced George McPhee's hand.
Marchessault said as much himself last week.
Marchessault, on #VegasBorn success: "We're making it tough on our GM."
A week later, beyond "making it tough," Wednesday's announcement of Marchessault's six-year, $30 million dollar pact is the clearest sign yet that the front office has at least modified their short-term plans.
Going back to the summer, the general belief was that McPhee had gathered a so-so team and an adequate war chest of draft picks. This was an organization primed to be a seller at the Trade Deadline -- and everybody knew it.
Now, everything has changed. But how much has changed?
It's one thing to sign a 27-year-old to a long-term deal. How pending UFAs David Perron and James Neal's contract situations are resolved will be even more illuminating. Perron is 29; Neal is 30.
He's right to be cautious. While pundits and fans can make postseason plans, McPhee has 22 games until the February 26th Trade Deadline to set the course for this franchise. A lot can happen until then, and it's his job to keep a cool head.
With Jason Garrison, Mikhail Grabovski, and Clayton Stoner coming off the books at the end of this year -- that's almost $13 million dollars of cap space -- there is a lot of flexibility next season. Would either Neal or Perron be interested in a fat, short-term contract? And if not, can a first-place team really afford to trade their third and fifth-leading scorers?
Everybody expected McPhee to be a man to watch this Trade Deadline -- and he still is, but for far different reasons than anybody predicted.
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So what is McPhee waiting on?
Starting with this back-to-back in St. Louis then Chicago, Vegas will play 12 of its next 16 games on the road. Besides the aforementioned stops, the Golden Knights will also visit Nashville, Tampa Bay, Winnipeg, Washington, Pittsburgh, and San Jose.
Perhaps for McPhee, this stretch is the crucible from which the Knights will emerge as either Cup contender or pretender.
To be the former, Vegas will have to play better than they did last night in a 2-1 loss to St. Louis.
Winning Play
Gerard Gallant won't be thrilled with the fact that his fourth line was on the ice for both goals against last night. Colton Parayko kicks off the Paul Stastny game-winner with a rush:
This is all Parayko.
Seeing the Knights change, the big defenseman steams up the right lane. Shooting for the rebound, he throws it off Marc-Andre Fleury's pad, up the gut. Oscar Lindberg is a split-second behind Paul Stastny, who lights it up. Fleury makes a tremendous stop, but all of his teammates have lost sight of the puck.
Pluses
The Knights made a number of small but spectacular individual plays last night. Here are a couple from Shea Theodore:
The latter clip is a great read. Theodore recognizes that Scottie Upshall's pass to Alex Pietrangelo isn't perfect, so he uses his mobility to close the gap and break up what should have been a dangerous St. Louis opportunity.
Minuses
However, they just couldn't get rolling as a unit.
According to Natural Stat Trick, St. Louis had the majority of the 5v5 high-danger chances (13-4). This corroborates with my own tracking, which had the Blues ahead 20-13 in quality even strength chances.
St. Louis, of course, had a lot to do with that. They consistently forced the Vegas attack to play in traffic (read St. Louis sticks). Early in the game, the Blues hemmed in the Knights by taking the wall away on the breakout.
The Golden Knights failed to execute too. Even though they went down 1-0 in the opening frame, that was actually their best period of the game, as they enjoyed the lionshare of outnumbered attacks (4-1), but did nothing with them.
A couple Marchessault chances exemplify the close-but-not-quite nature of the game for Vegas:
The Knights didn't play badly, but they'll need another gear to come out of January still on top of the West. Tonight, they're in Chicago. Luca Sbisa is back; Jon Merrill goes to the IR with an "undisclosed" injury; Malcolm Subban should draw the start.
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