Vegas Golden Knights: "What in the World is Going on Out Here?????"

First, the Golden Knights traded away Marc Andre Fleury and the fans went bonkers.

I was, admittedly, bummed about this but was willing to give the Golden Knights brain-trust the benefit of the doubt and wait and see what they were able to accomplish with this new found cap space. OK, I said to myself, loving Fleury is rough, but I agree that having the Cap space to re-sign Alex Martinez and signing a quality center will make them a better team going forward.

This, is not what happened.

Yes, the Golden Knights re-signed Martinez, which is good, but then they traded for Evginii Dadonov, a declining winger from Ottawa, giving up promising defenseman Nick Holden and a 3rd round draft pick. My guess is with Dadonov that they hope his decline in Ottawa was more to to Ottawa than Dadonov, but they still haven't solved their most glaring problem.

After Dadonov, they announced the signing of a new backup goalie, Laurent Broissoi formerly of Winnipeg, whos was a fine backup for them but who is nowhere close to the quality of Fleury.

All of that cap space is now gone. I saw on Twitter where they have about $186K remaining, but they still have to sign the RFA Patrick to the qualified offer that they made to him.

So, let's recap. They've traded away the face of the franchise and the most beloved, and the best, player during the entire life of the team (Not to mention the locker room leader, community giant, etc.) for a sack of beans and have used that salary cap room to make the team markedly worse.

The thing people keep pointing to is the mythical Eichel trade, which will probably involve moving either (or more likely both) Pacioretty and Tuch.

Think the fans are going to be happy with that one?

And I haven't even gone into the mess of how GM Kelly McKrimmon treats players, and what might, or might not have happened with communication with Fleury regarding the trade.

This is an easy team to root for on the ice, but a helluva difficult franchise to pull for off it.

Right now the BEST CASE scenario for Knight's fans is that Davadov was bad because of Ottawa, that Lehner has a career year and Boissoi can provide enough quality minutes to spell Panda and keep him from being exhausted come playoff time. They also have to hope that their current crop of centers finally produce during playoff time, and that the Power Play miraculously gets fixed, and they they don't go into a scoring funk AGAIN when the post season rolls around.

Also in the equation, would be that Eichel is healthy and Davadov and he could increase goal production from Patches and Tuch.

These are big asks, and if any of them go South it could be that Vegas misses the playoffs for the first time in their history, or flames out in an early round.

Should the latter two scenarios happen then I think a house cleaning will be needed, both on the ice, on the bench and in the front office.

Very important season ahead for everyone methinks.