The Golden Knights didn’t shake up their roster with a splashy free-agent chase or a headline-grabbing trade. Instead, they doubled down on what they already had, locking up Rasmus Andersson on a seven-year deal and Jeremy Lauzon on a six-year contract. That approach drew a skeptical read from Adam Gretz of Bleacher Report, who graded the summer’s long-term signings and wasn’t especially impressed by either move.
Still, Vegas is betting on defense, and there’s logic behind that. The club already showed what that can look like when it brought in Noah Hanifin from the Calgary Flames a few seasons ago.
By early 2026, Calgary was in a full rebuild and made Andersson available, allowing the Golden Knights to reunite him with his older partner Hanifin. Vegas again went after one of the league’s more desirable defensemen, and the payoff was a trip to the Stanley Cup Final before a Game 6 loss.
It was the deepest playoff run either Andersson or Hanifin had made, and both were central pieces on the blue line.
Lauzon’s case is a little different, but the numbers explain why Vegas kept him around. He arrived as a free agent last summer and played 68 games, setting a career high with 12 assists and finishing one point shy of his personal best of 14.
His ice time dipped by about a minute from his Boston days under Bruce Cassidy, settling at 17:11, and he ended the season minus-3. For a bottom-pair defenseman, that’s a workable line.
Gretz did flag the danger of committing six years to a 29-year-old, but Lauzon has topped 12 points in three of the past four seasons when he’s played more than 60 games.
The broader financial picture helps explain why the Golden Knights are comfortable making these kinds of bets. The NHL salary cap keeps climbing, and by the end of the decade, Jack Eichel is projected to be at $13.5 million and Mitch Marner at $12 million.
The source also notes that recently departed Pavel Dorofeyev signed a $77 million contract with the New York Rangers and will make $11 million annually, while Andersson and Lauzon will make just $1.5 million more combined. Against that backdrop, Vegas looks disciplined rather than reckless.
That becomes even clearer when you compare it to the Colorado Avalanche’s commitment to Cale Makar, who just landed a $164 million deal with a $20 million annual salary. The Golden Knights are taking a different route, choosing to spread their money across two defensemen instead of pouring it into one player and squeezing the rest of the roster. It may not win universal approval, but in Las Vegas, the hope is simple: Andersson and Lauzon help push the club back to another Stanley Cup.
In Other News...
Golden Knights Fans Have An Easy New Way To Chase Free Tickets
Library Card Sign-Up Month is turning into an easy little bonus for local sports fans, with the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District offering cardholders a chance to win tickets to Golden Knights and Raiders home games. The promotion is open to both new and existing library cardholders through Sept. 30, giving residents another reason to check out a library card beyond the usual books, programs and resources.
Winners will be chosen randomly in October, and the giveaway adds a bit of local flavor to a month that already serves as a reminder of how much the library district is tied into the community. For Golden Knights fans, it is also a timely nudge as attention keeps building around the teams future schedule, including the preseason slate already on the calendar for 2026-27. [Read more 🡒]
Golden Knights Face One Big Prospect Question They Cant Ignore
Trevor Connelly now sits at the top of the Golden Knights prospect pile after the team moved Pavel Dorofeyev to the Rangers, a reminder of just how thin the pipeline has become. In Scott Wheelers The Athletic Top 145 NHL Prospects list, Connelly checked in as a Support player, which still gives Vegas a young name to point to even as the organization continues leaning hard on trades to keep its roster competitive now.
The bigger issue is what happens next, because the Golden Knights have already dealt away several recent first-round picks in their push to load up at the NHL level. That approach has worked in the short term, but it also leaves the franchise with fewer premium prospects and a narrower margin for error if the roster starts to age or the current contender window shifts. [Read more 🡒]
Sapovaliv Faces A Bigger Henderson Role Than Ever Before
Matyas Sapovaliv has already built a reputation as a smart offensive player, with the kind of production he showed in the OHL still standing out as a reminder of what he can do when things click. The challenge has been carrying that same touch into three seasons with the Henderson Silver Knights, where the scoring has not followed at the same pace. Even so, his playmaking and maturity remain real selling points, and those traits have kept him in the conversation as a player who can still grow into a larger role.
With roster changes expected around Henderson, the timing gives Sapovaliv a chance to take on more responsibility than ever before. The path forward is less about reinventing his game than finding a way to turn his strengths into more offense at the AHL level, where every shift matters and secondary contributions can add up quickly. If he can translate more of that offensive instinct into production, it would give the Silver Knights another useful piece as they adjust to what comes next. [Read more 🡒]