NHL Rumors: The Vegas Golden Knights could go big to fill their top-nine hole

The Vegas Golden Knights could use a top-nine winger

Jesse Granger of The Athletic: The Vegas Golden Knights could use someone to play with Jack Eichel now that Mark Stone is lost to injury.

San Jose Sharks Timo Meier is one option that could work with Eichel. He won’t be cheap to acquire is owed a large qualifying offer or else he’d become a UFA. Stone to the LTIR would give them the cap room for this year but would be tricky to extend him. Would the Sharks even want to trade Meier to a division rival?

Cheaper options could be Detroit Red Wings pending UFA Pius Suter ($3.25 million), St. Louis Blues pending UFA Noel Acciari ($1.3 million) and Chicago Blackhawks pending UFA Andreas Athanasiou ($3 million).

NHL Rumors: Vegas Golden Knights, and the Vancouver Canucks

If Mark Stone goes to the LTIR for the regular season, Patrick Kane would make perfect sense

Anthony Trudeau of Daily Faceoff: Frank Seravalli notes that the Vegas Golden Knights have the opportunity to put Mark Stone on the LTIR for the rest of the regular season and to then have $9.25 million salary cap space to work with and go after a big named winger – Patrick Kane. He makes so much sense to play on a line with fellow American Jack Eichel, and would likely be open to the idea of going to Vegas.

Seravalli: “I would think so but here’s the thing, he’s probably not a re-sign candidate.  Unless Stone is out for way longer, and we don’t believe that that’s the case, I don’t know how you’d be able to fit him in.  Here’s where it gets really interesting for Vegas, you take Kane’s $10.5 million salary and chop it in half with Chicago retaining salary, and you’d still have some change to go out and add a defenseman.  We’d talked about that as their top deadline objective before this Stone injury.”

NHL Rumors: The Vegas Golden Knights need some scoring help up front