Given that the Golden Knights currently have only one player - Reid Duke - under contract, the team's salary cap space is virtually unlimited.
With trades like Chychrun's having been engineered solely because of the Coyotes' wide open salary cap situation, questions have been asked if the Golden Knights could similarly leverage the team's lack of financial commitments to acquire talent in exchange for virtually nothing.
In a recent phone call with season ticket holders, George McPhee shared his thoughts on using this strategy to Vegas' benefit.
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"Cap space is valuable," McPhee said. "And there will be people willing to give us good assets to take certain contracts, because they have cap issues. There are teams that have cap stress, there are teams that have expansion stress, there are teams that have both.
"We're here and willing to talk to all these clubs. And we'll take on some of their problems if they want to compensate us in the right way to do so. There's an opportunity cost to that. So we'll be smart about it."
The takeaway from this is that the Golden Knights utilizing the team's limitless salary cap situation as a trading chip with which to acquire top talent that would otherwise be unavailable is a distinct possibility.
McPhee, however, was quick to emphasize that this doesn't mean the Golden Knights will be a team that will be unwilling to spend to the cap ceiling.
More that as he assembles the team's roster, this will be a legitimate strategy that he will consider utilizing.
"Bill Foley has no problem spending to the Cap, if we want to spend to the Cap," McPhee said. "But until we see the entire universe of players, we're not going to know, be quite sure of what that's going to look like. But we'll spend where we have to spend to be good."