GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS, REAL NEWS FOR VEGAS

EDMONTON, AB -- For the Vegas Golden Knights fans who woke up this morning dealing with the pain of three seasons in the desert without a Stanley Cup championship, I’ve got some good news, bad news and real news for you.

The good news?

Your new No.1 goalie for next season was not playing for a contract in the playoffs.

The bad news?

For a second consecutive season, a team coached by Peter DeBoer ended your season.

The real news?

For all the things the organization has going for it, the Vancouver series and Dallas series demonstrated a weakness in the depth chart that must be addressed for Vegas to win a championship.

Starting with the most controversial news, the goaltending saga featuring a Panda and a Flower ended with a whimper. Along the path to a five-game elimination by the Dallas Stars, the strategy of bolstering or upgrading the position at the trade deadline went from a smart one to a messy and finally, an unsuccessful one. Without question, a tandem of Marc-Andre Fleury and Robin Lehner is significantly stronger for a championship run than the Fleury-Malcolm Subban pairing that was in place.

But along the way to the Game 5 WCF overtime loss to Dallas, things got twisted to the extent that Lehner played in 80% of the games (16 out of 20) and Fleury was relegated to the good solider, reduced to the guy who turned over the net during warmup so the Stars couldn’t shoot puck into the Vegas practice cage.

As TFP reported last week, the decision has been made to move on from the man who has been the face of the franchise between the pipes by virtue of agreeing in principle to a $25 million, five-year deal with Lehner that should be announced at some point before the opening of free agency.

And yes, Lehner’s raw post-season numbers support the deal, 1.97 GAA and .917 save percentage combined with the age factor (he’s 29, Fleury turns 36 in November) tips the scales further in favor of moving on. However, it can easily be argued that letting Lehner walk to free agency by undoing the handshake deal made in June would leave the team in as good a shape as dealing Fleury away, the only option remaining when Lehner’s deal is signed and registered with the NHL.

The lack of run support for Lehner left him with a final won-loss post-season record of 9-7 and while he was not to blame for the loss, the bulk of his numbers were fashioned against teams Vegas were prohibitive favorites against – the Chicago Blackhawks, who in any other season wouldn’t have been in the playoffs and the plucky Vancouver Canucks, a team with young talent yet still not a legitimate Stanley Cup contender but a team who if they hadn’t played back-to-back in Game 6 and 7, could have gone on to play Dallas. Viewing Lehner’s body of work for 16 post-season games only one big save comes to mind, the glove save on Vancouver’s Brock Boeser to keep a Game 7 scoreless tie intact.

And that’s where we get to DeBoer, the man whose name was imprinted on the infamous sword image posted by Fleury’s agent, Allan Walsh. While it’s doubtful the goaltending decision, which carried much weight to the fortunes of the franchise, was done by a lone actor, the fact that “McCrimmon” or “McPhee” wasn’t found anywhere along that blade makes it appears that DeBoer led the charge on the change to Lehner.

Vegas is Lehner’s fifth stop in seven seasons, travels that define the term “career journeyman” and maybe it is his final one. He appears to have won the battles with his off-ice challenges by being a signature away from being rewarded with financial security and career stability, a fact we should all be cheering. The problem is, the player he is replacing has a post-season track record far better than his – 13-12 won loss record vs a player in Fleury, who if he had remained the No.1 could have finished this post-season in third place in lifetime post-season wins by a goaltender.

The lack of offense was the primary reason Vegas is considering off-season moves today instead of prepping for its second Cup Final in three seasons, but Lehner was the second best pending free agent goaltender in the series. He did not steal a game, did not make a save in a big spot in overtime and along the trail to the Western Conference Final beat the teams that Fleury likely would have beaten if given the opportunity.

As for DeBoer, he has the distinction of losing to a team who will enter the Cup Final with a negative goal differential, something that has not occurred since the 1968 St. Louis Blues played two rounds to get to a Cup Final. In fairness, the removing of Gerard Gallant (still unemployed after the Capitals’ decision to make Peter Laviolette their new bench boss) was the necessary move in the short term – the Golden Misfits had morphed into a team that lacked a sense of urgency that was its signature through its unprecedented success. DeBoer got the team back on track that culminated in a first place Pacific Division standing and a No.2 seed in the West.

But over the long term, the decision of Lehner over Fleury and his inability to figure out how to get the offense going over the last two rounds begs the question: is DeBoer a very good coach but not a championship coach? He’s led two different teams to a Stanley Cup Final but neither could close the deal; the loss to Dallas wasn’t an excruciating seven-game defeat but rather a five-game ouster which featured the last two losses of the come-from-ahead vintage. The reality is DeBoer could not take a more talented version of the Golden Knights further in the post-season than his predecessor.

But the fingerprints on this loss are not solely tracked to one individual.

The Golden Knights will see Conn Smythe contender Anton Khudobin in their dreams (and nightmares) over the next few weeks and their lack of production in the center position that hamstrung the offense after the Chicago series is offered as Exhibit A:

Over the past decade, every Cup winner had an elite player in the middle (Anze Kopitar, Jonathan Toews, Sidney Crosby, Evgeny Kuznetsov/Nick Backstrom, Ryan O’Reilly). Vegas’s forward strength is on its wings and when the facilitators in the middle can’t deliver it is a very short list of wingers who can carry a team to a championship, Alex Ovechkin and Patrick Kane can and as skilled as the Vegas flanks are, they are not standalone players that have led a team to a championship. As for the two aforementioned pivots, Karlsson has regressed since his first breakout season in Vegas and has leveled off as a quality 2C at best, while Stastny enters his walk year of his contract as a 35 years old center best suited for a third line center role on a championship roster.

Maybe Cody Glass helps next season, maybe in retrospect trading away Nick Suzuki in the Max Pacioretty trade weakened a position where the quality of the depth was overestimated, but in a conference that contains 1-2 center punches like Nathan MacKinnon/Nazem Kadri and Connor McDavid/Leon Draisaitl (yes, it’s a big assumption Ken Holland gets the Oilers on track), the task having to defeat that level of skill in the post-season with the current Vegas pivot alignment doesn’t look promising. There is simply no center available in the off-season market that will substantially improve the offense to that extent.

The window is not closed on the Vegas Golden Knights Stanley Cup championship run, but the framework needs to change for them to capture a title. With that backdrop, there appears to be a change in organizational direction with Kelly McCrimmon as General Manager – the dismissal of a well-liked coach, an underpublicized dismissal of the goaltending coach and the major shift in the future of the goaltending position that did not substantially improve the team.

NOT-SO-FREE AGENCY

Remember those seemingly never days when we longed for hockey to come back? Buckle up for the next four weeks, the conclusion of a disrupted season will be followed quickly by the Draft and then Free Agency Frenzy.

But will it be a frenzy?

In this time of financial uncertainty and chatter that teams will be “budget” as opposed to “cap” teams given the likelihood of starting next season with limited capacity in NHL arenas, the willingness of owners to commit tens of millions of long-term dollars is a stark reality.

The disappointment expressed by Alex Pietrangelo, the home-grown cornerstone of the St. Louis Blues franchise regarding a contract extension is a telling sign. Unlike another pending unrestricted free agent, Boston’s Torey Krug, Pietrangelo would likely give St. Louis a little latitude on a deal that would keep him in Missouri for the balance of his career.

Just how many teams will line up to offer Taylor Hall in the neighborhood of $50 million for his next contract? Hall has proven not to be the same player than carried the Devils to a post-season berth in his Hart Trophy season, his final days in New Jersey lacked goal scoring and his short tenure in Arizona demonstrated that like most wingers, he needs to play with a quality center to produce big numbers.

With a flat salary cap over the next three seasons, I think that we may see more three-year deals than usual to mirror the business conditions (hopefully things improve the further we distance ourselves from an awful 2020).

One positive sign for the UFA crop is the Jonas Brodin contract extension announced by the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday, a $42 million, seven-year deal that shows either a) confidence by ownership that business will return to usual sooner or b) madness in a time of uncertainty.

And while the high-end talent will likely get their asking price but may have to bend on term, multiple teams adhering to budgets $5-10 million less than the cap will continue to price out the middle of the roster veterans making $3-5 million per season. That’s key in the trade market as teams trying to navigate the financial waters.

Tampa and St. Louis come to mind specifically – as the Andrei Vasilevskiy extension kicks in and top-four defenseman Mikhail Sergachev in need of a deal, these ease of trading Tyler Johnson, Alex Killorn, Ondrej Palat or Yanni Gourde simply isn’t in place as it was in previous seasons.

Similarly, in St. Louis, though they’ve cleared cap space in the Jake Allen to Montreal deal, the task of trading Tyler Bozak (ostensibly a 3C) or Alexander Steen (mostly a fourth liner) with their $5 million and $5.7 million cap space (Steen’s cash at $3.5 million softens a potential landing) explains why Pietrangelo is experiencing feelings of disappointment.

I get the sneaking suspicion the Nick Bjugstad giveaway deal to Minnesota will not be an anomaly this off-season.

HERE AND THERE

From my personal experience in Edmonton, there is no way we start next season in a bubble. #DBInQuarantine

• The 2020 class of the US Hockey Hall of Fame are worthy inductees but for the second consecutive year play-by-play legend Bob Miller was snubbed. Needs to change next season.

• On other platforms, if you haven’t caught us on SiriusXM NHL Network, there’s still time over the next month. We’ll continue to bring you “The Hot Stove, powered by TFP” on Saturdays from 11am-1pm Eastern with co-hosts Dave Pagnotta and Ryan Paton, as well as being moved up the weekday chart for the occasional co-hosting appearance on “The Power Play” with Steve Kouleas. Big thanks to the Boss, Peter Berce for keeping us on the air throughout the pause in play and to Steve, Mick Kern and Bruce Bolton for their support on the air and behind-the-scenes.

• The Mayor John Hoven has kept me busy with Kings Of The Podcast as well. Recent guests include Anze Kopitar and new Ontario Reign coach John Wroblewski who conducted a transparent interview as coaches go.

• On the LA front, while the well-discussed need for proven help on the left side of the blueline (Montreal has the inside track on one potential solution, Joel Edmundson by trading for his rights from Carolina) will be addressed, there is another big picture aspect that needs to be addressed for the blueline. Despite the game continuing to evolve into one where speed and skill has increasing importance, a look at the final four teams in the post-season show a common denominator – size. Aside from both Dallas and Tampa Bay’s 6-foot-7 defensemen (Victor Hedman and Jamie Oleksiak), the defense depth chart has numerous 6’2”-6’3”/200-215-pound blueliners. Aside from Kurtis MacDermid, there’s little size on the NHL roster or in the system and despite it being not a rich draft in terms of defensive talent, it might be wise for the organization to looks at some sizable defensive prospects with the five picks in the second and third rounds.