Frank Seravalli is reporting the Vegas Golden Knights have reached a verbal agreement with right winger Reilly Smith to re-sign with the club. No terms were reported. Seravalli said an official announcement may take some time as Vegas has some cap issues to sort out first.
You can take Reilly Smith off the Top 50 UFAs board.
Sources say Smith and the Vegas @GoldenKnights have reached a verbal agreement to keep the winger with VGK on a contract extension.
May not be immediately announced for offseason/tagging cap considerations.@DailyFaceoff
— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) June 23, 2022
Report: Reilly Smith Re-signs
Over his eleven-year NHL career, Smith played for the Dallas Stars, Boston Bruins, Florida Panthers, and Vegas Golden Knights. The Stars drafted him back in 2009 with their third-round, 69th overall selection. He left Dallas via trade in the summer of 2013, as they dealt him to Boston as part of the Tyler Seguin blockbuster. He wound up in Florida via trade just a couple of seasons later. Then, he once again changed addresses to Vegas after a trade during their expansion draft.
Last season with the Golden Knight, Smith posted 16 goals and 22 assists for 38 points through 56 games. He also posted a 54.9% Corsi, and 4.4% relative Corsi. Smith will continue his tenure in Vegas, which represents the longest stint in his journey thus far, appearing there in 321 of his 686 total career games. He also scored 230 (98 goals, 132 assists) of his 417 career points in a Golden Knights uniform.
Golden Knights players told me Reilly Smith is the best player on the team.
Agree? Disagree?
Full story with some very telling quotes from the players of how good Smith really is, and how badly the team is missing him- https://t.co/A8btTX4jns #VegasBorn pic.twitter.com/1ixzLJQvKe
— Jesse Granger (@JesseGranger_) January 20, 2019
What This Means for the Future
This is an interesting move for the Golden Knights as most people figured Smith would be a cap casualty this off-season. The Golden Knights went all-in for a Cup in what seems like every single year of their existence to date. Part of that “all-in” mentality included blockbuster trades on a regular, yearly basis. They acquired Max Pacioretty in one such deal, and Mark Stone in another. Heck, the expansion draft trade to first acquire Smith could be considered one too, as they also landed Jonathan Marchessault in that move as their expansion draft selection from Florida. Most recently, Vegas splashed big this past season to acquire Jack Eichel from the Buffalo Sabres.
But, their big moves go beyond just the trade market, too. They signed Alex Pietrangelo in free agency, as well as Alec Martinez. This roster holds so many household NHL names with high-end talent, it is frankly flat-out embarrassing that they missed the postseason this past year. All these moves for high-end players has put Vegas up against the salary cap, however. They will need to shed some salary before the 2022-23 season begins. They have already started by moving Evgenii Dadonov and his $5M cap hit. Still, this report that Reilly Smith re-signed has caught many off guard. Smith appeared to be a luxury the Golden Knights could no longer afford.
While all the details are not public, it will be interesting to see what kind of contract the parties agreed to. With Vegas having literally no cap space they would still need to move contracts out and free up salary cap room for Smith. Either way, Vegas is going to be a team to watch this off-season.
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