What pressure is left for the Vegas Golden Knights after winning the Stanley Cup? The pressure to defend their title with expiring contracts, writes Adam Proteau.

The NHL’s 2023 off-season is almost over, but our ongoing THN.com hot seat series continues to roll on with the Vegas Golden Knights. In this feature, we’re analyzing pressures felt by every NHL team’s players, coaches, GMs and team owners.

We continue to move through the league’s teams in alphabetical order, and we’re picking out one player, coach, team owner or GM as someone on their team’s hot seat, facing massive pressure to put up above-average results in 2023-24, or wind up in the franchise’s doghouse. A second person will be put on the warm seat as an individual unlikely to be fired or traded soon, but who may be dealt or fired sometime this coming season. A third individual will be placed on the cold seat as someone highly likely to remain with their team for the long-term. 

On occasion, we’ll select four or five players per file, thanks to ties in one or two categories. Today is one such day.

Golden Knights’ Hot Seat: (tie) Chandler Stephenson, C/LW, and Jonathan Marchessault, LW/RW

Let’s be perfectly clear: after the Golden Knights’ Stanley Cup-winning 2022-23 season, nobody on the roster is imminently about to be traded. Vegas GM Kelly McCrimmon shipped out veteran winger Reilly Smith to Pittsburgh, but otherwise, his roster remains more or less intact. 

That said, the Golden Knights are completely out of salary cap space this season, and in 2024-25, they have only 16 players under contract and $13.4 million in cap space.

The 29-year-old Stephenson and the 32-year-old Marchessault are top-six forwards for Vegas, and each one posted strong years for the Golden Knights last season. But there’s only so much cap space to go around. With Marchessault and Stephenson scheduled to be UFAs in the summer of 2024, there’s a strong possibility McCrimmon will have to decide between signing one or the other. 

Marchessault has a cap hit this coming season of $5 million – with a five-team no-trade clause – while Stephenson’s cap hit is $2.75 million. The better each of the two veterans play in 2023-24, the harder it will be to get their signatures on a contract extension.

Marchessault won the Conn Smythe Trophy last spring with 13 goals and 25 points in 22 playoff games, but Stephenson also had a solid post-season, generating 10 goals and 20 points in 22 games. They’ll be highly coveted if they make it to the open market, and McCrimmon may prevent that by signing one of them to an extension in the middle of the 2023-24 campaign, but he’ll be challenged to keep both of them.

Golden Knights’ Warm Seat: (tie) Adin Hill, G, and Logan Thompson, G

As we noted in the hot seat section, after Vegas’ tremendous playoff tournament, nobody here is in danger of being moved. The Golden Knights benefited greatly from their multiple goaltending options in the post-season, with Hill coming in as an injury replacement for Laurent Brossoit midway through the second round and making 16 appearances while posting a 2.17 goals-against average and .932 save percentage. There’s no better time to excel than the Cup final, and Hill was rewarded on June 30 for doing so with a two-year, $9.8-million contract extension.

Hill and Thompson are expected to battle for playing time in '23-24. Thompson made 37 appearances last season, and his individual stats – a 2.65 G.A.A. and .915 save percentage – weren’t bad at all. Thompson has played only 57 career regular-season NHL games, while Hill has 101, but the latter has the more significant cap imprint on the team. We may be looking at Thompson playing about the same number of games and Hill getting the remaining 45 or 50 games.

It’s an awfully big set of shoes to step into for Hill, and time will tell if he or Thompson – probably not both – secure a longer-term contract with Vegas. But we get the sense McCrimmon is cold-blooded with his goaltenders. He’s quickly moved on from veterans before, and the Golden Knights’ defensive acumen likely can handle another change of goalies if financial pressures become an issue with Thompson and Hill at the end of next year, when both are UFAs. There’s a clear golden opportunity there for Hill and Thompson, but there’s also a chance one or both struggle and depart the team a year or two from now. Hence, these two share the warm seat.

Golden Knights’ Cold Seat: Mark Stone, RW/LW

Only forward Ivan Barbashev and blueliner Zach Whitecloud are signed for longer than Stone, who is under contract through the spring of 2027. Barbashev and Whitecloud can be traded, but Stone has a full no-move clause in his deal, per PuckPedia. And why would McCrimmon even entertain the thought of dealing Stone? Sure, he has trouble staying healthy, but when he is on the ice, Stone is consistently a point-per-game player who can come through in key situations.

That’s what happened this past season; Stone had a hat trick in Game 5 of the Cup final, making him one of just three NHLers ever to score a hat trick in the Cup-clinching game. He’s a big-game player, and the Golden Knights aren’t nearly so good at both ends of the arena when he’s out of the lineup.

Stone has a cap hit of $9.5 million, second only on the team to center Jack Eichel's $10 million. Why? Because when Stone is on the ice, Vegas thrives. Yes, it’s that straightforward. Stone uses his 6-foot-3 frame to his advantage, and he’s instinctually wise as to where the puck is headed. 

He’s got four seasons to go on his contract, and at age 31, Stone is likely to complete his career as a Golden Knight. That’s about as cold a seat as it gets.