Theodore Signs, Heads to Camp

And then there was one key restricted free agent left on the market, as the Vegas Golden Knights and defenseman Shea Theodore reached agreement in the late hours of Monday night.  The deal is set to be a 7-year contract extension, worth $36.4 million in total, a $5.2 million cap hit per season.

Theodore, 23, is coming off the final year of his entry-level season, part of the Vegas expansion, where he played 61 games for the club, scoring 6 goals and 29 points, which was good enough for 60th among all defensemen in scoring.  The Golden Knights clearly see him as a cornerstone piece of the franchise and now they have locked him up for the long-term.

With the signing, Theodore is the highest-paid defenseman on the team and if he can play the whole 2019 season, it will be very interesting to see what kind of numbers he can possibly put up.  There is certainly some potential in his game to eclipse the half a point-per game scoring rate, but he has yet to play a full season in the NHL, so expectations are still a bit tempered.  I would be putting him in the 40-point range, close to the 43 points that the Hockey News projects him at this year.

The Golden Knights have managed to wade their way through their first major free agency period pretty well, still leaving themselves a shade under $6 million in salary cap space with their new 23-man roster and they have some positive numbers for the 2020 season, with a 23-man roster already filled out and still have $12 million in space for free agency.