Jack Eichel's long-awaited return to NHL competition is just a few days away.
The Vegas Golden Knights center will make his debut with the team Wednesday night against the Colorado Avalanche. It's a matchup between arguably the two-best teams in the Western Conference and a potential conference final preview.
Eichel, a North Chelmsford, Mass., native, has not played since March 7 of 2021. He's been dealing with a neck injury and had disk replacement surgery in November.
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The Golden Knights acquired Eichel from the Buffalo Sabres via trade in November. Vegas sent Buffalo a 2022 first-round pick, highly touted prospect Peyton Krebs, forward Alex Tuch and a 2022 third-round pick.
It appeared the Golden Knights might need to make a trade to get salary cap compliant before Eichel (and his $10 million salary cap hit) landed on the active roster. But instead, the team announced Monday that captain Mark Stone (and his $9.5 million cap hit) is going on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) with a back issue. This move, plus a few other small ones, should be enough to get Vegas cap compliant without having to trade a good player to clear salary.
Of course, it didn't take long for people on social media to point out that this Stone-to-LTIR move looks a little like the LTIR stuff the Tampa Bay Lightning did last season. Tampa Bay used LTIR to its advantage with Nikita Kucherov in 2020-21 and entered the playoffs more than $17 million over the salary cap. A player on LTIR does not count against the cap, and since there is no salary cap in the playoffs, Stone could return for the playoffs without Vegas needing to shed salary.
Stone has a legit injury, one that caused him to miss about a month earlier in the season. But the timing of his LTIR move and Eichel's return is interesting, to say the least.
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You can't really fault the Lightning, Golden Knights or any team that uses LTIR to work around the salary cap. These are the rules, so you might as well use them to your advantage until the league wakes up and makes the necessary fixes.