The Golden Knights spent the offseason facing a familiar kind of goaltending puzzle, but Kelly McCrimmon made the club’s position pretty clear once free agency opened.
Akira Schmid had been the team’s leader in starts, wins, save percentage and shutouts, which put the Golden Knights in a tricky spot. As a pending Restricted Free Agent, keeping him meant more than just working out a new deal; it also would have required moving out one of the other goaltenders on the roster.
That naturally brought Adin Hill’s future into focus. Hill was the man in net when Vegas won its first Stanley Cup three years ago, but his stock had slipped after a rough season in which he finished with a career-worst .871 save percentage.
His contract also made things harder. He’s due $6.25 million over the next five seasons, and he also carries a 10-team no-trade list.
The organization answered one part of the equation on Monday by trading Schmid to the Florida Panthers. Then McCrimmon followed that up on Wednesday with a message that left little doubt about where Vegas stands.
“My opinion is that you need two good goalies,” said McCrimmon on Wednesday. “You set out on September 1st, and if you’re hoping to play in the Stanley Cup Final, you’re going to play 104, 105 hockey games. You need two goaltenders to get through that.
“I think we have a great tandem,” McCrimmon continued. “I think Adin is gonna bounce back; I think he’s a good goalie who had a tough season.
We need him to revert to form, and we expect that he will. Carter made a great impression, getting us straight to the Stanley Cup Final.
So, I think we’re in good shape at that position.”
In Other News...
Golden Knights Fans Just Got A Brutal Original Misfits Update
Reilly Smiths second run with the Golden Knights now looks like it will stop at one season, according to Danny Webster of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. After coming back to Vegas in a trade from the New York Rangers and signing a one-year deal for the 2025-26 campaign, Smith was always one of the more familiar faces in the room, part of the original group that helped shape the franchises identity and later one of the steady veterans fans expected to see back in the mix.
Brandon Saad and Ben Hutton are also set to hit the open market, leaving Vegas with a few more decisions to sort through as the roster takes another turn. For a team that has leaned on experience and continuity in its rise, losing a handful of known pieces at once changes the feel around the group, even before the rest of the offseason picture comes into focus. [Read more 🡒]
Golden Knights Just Took Another Big Pietrangelo Step
Alex Pietrangelos name remains part of the Golden Knights books, but the practical reality around the veteran defenseman has not changed. Vegas has placed him on long-term injured reserve for the 2026-27 season, a move that comes after he was briefly back on the active roster list on July 1, and it underscores how far the team has already moved toward life without him. Pietrangelos run in the NHL effectively ended after the 2024-25 season, closing a 17-season career that included two Stanley Cup championships and a long stretch as one of the leagues most reliable blueliners.
For Vegas, the roster note also carries cap implications as the club works through the final year of Pietrangelos seven-year, $61.6 million contract signed in 2020. The LTIR move gives the Golden Knights just under $1 million in cap space, but the bigger significance is the organizational one: one of the defining players from the franchises championship core is now being handled strictly as a non-playing piece, even if he remains around the team in other ways. [Read more 🡒]