The Athletic’s latest look at the NHL’s worst contracts includes a name that stands out in Vegas: Golden Knights goalie Adin Hill.
Dom Luszczyszyn put Hill in his Top 3, and the reasons are easy to see. After helping the franchise win its first Stanley Cup in 2023, Hill first landed a two-year extension worth $9.8 million from general manager Kelly McCrimmon.
Then, in early 2025, Vegas locked him in again on a six-year, $37.5 million deal. Not long after that paperwork was signed, questions started piling up around Hill’s future and health.
By 2026, Hill is the 16th highest-paid goalie in the league and one of just 18 netminders earning more than $6 million a year. He’s also one of 13 goalies age 30 or older on that list of expensive contracts. The problem is what happened on the ice in the first full season of the new deal: Hill appeared in only 27 games and finished 10-9-6 with a career-worst .870 SV% and 3.04 GAA.
The slide got ugly enough that, during Vegas’ recent run to the championship series, Hill didn’t play a single minute. Carter Hart took over, and former head coach John Tortarella stayed with the goalie he had leaned on from his Philadelphia days all the way through the postseason. When Vegas was down in the Final, Tortarella even balked at the idea of going back to Hill.
Hart is staying in the desert, too, which only sharpens the question around Hill’s role going forward. In 2024-25, Hill played a career-high 50 games, and that was the only season in which he has ever topped 35 appearances. With Hart also described as a workhorse puckstopper, the Golden Knights’ goaltending picture now has plenty of moving parts.
Luszczyszyn’s ranking isn’t hard to understand. Among goalies making $6 million annually, only Hill and Thatcher Demko of the Vancouver Canucks failed to reach 41 games last season. Given Hill’s modest win-loss mark, Vegas appears to have paid for what he had already done, not what he was able to deliver after the extension.
Hill isn’t the only Golden Knights-connected player to show up on the list. Former forward Chandler Stephenson checked in at No. 2, behind Calgary’s Jonathan Huberdeau, after signing a seven-year, $43 million contract with the Seattle Kraken. Original Misfit Alex Tuch landed at No. 9 after agreeing to an eight-year, $84 million deal with the Washington Capitals.
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