The Vegas Golden Knights made it official: Ryan Craig is their next head coach, taking over after the John Tortorella experiment ended. Craig paid his dues in the AHL with the Henderson Silver Knights. Now he inherits a roster fresh off a Stanley Cup Final loss. But that doesn’t mean everyone from that run will be back for 2026-27. The front office should already be on the phone trying to move William Karlsson.
Karlsson is one of the last men standing from the original 2017-18 expansion team. That first season he scored 40 goals and became the face of the Golden Misfits who dragged Vegas to a Cup Final nobody saw coming. Later, he put up 17 points in 22 games during the 2023 playoffs and helped win the franchise’s first title. But with one year left on his deal and a logjam of younger talent coming up, his time in Vegas feels finished.
It would be an abrupt ending. Karlsson got hurt in Game 5 of the Cup Final, took an arm injury and never got back on the ice for Game 6. He leaves as the second-highest point scorer in Golden Knights regular-season history and third in playoff scoring. The franchise isn’t known for sentimentality though. They’ve already moved on from most of the original Misfits without much fanfare. No reason Karlsson would be different.
Why the Front Office Needs to Make a Deal
The biggest reason to deal Karlsson is named Pavel Dorofeyev. He’s seven years younger, coming off a career year where he scored 37 regular-season goals and added 12 more in the playoffs. The Russian forward slowed down a bit during the Cup Final but so did most of the top guys. Dorofeyev is the future and he needs a new contract this summer. Karlsson is a 33-year-old center whose offensive numbers have dipped. The math writes itself.
Vegas has always found creative ways to stay cap compliant. This season Alex Pietrangelo missed the whole year with an injury, which gave them room to squeeze in Mitch Marner. But the league changed the rule and now the cap stays fixed through the playoffs. No more funny business. So if they want to keep Dorofeyev, somebody has to go.
The return on Karlsson won’t be huge. He’s got a 10-team no-trade list so he can steer where he lands. He’s also coming off an injury and his best scoring days are behind him. A team that needs veteran leadership and center depth might toss a mid-round pick or a B-level prospect at Vegas. The Golden Knights have almost nothing left in their draft pick stash so any asset is a win.
And if Vegas doesn’t get a deal done before July 1, another team could drop an offer sheet on Dorofeyev. That would bring back picks but it wouldn’t help them win. So expect the front office to move fast, maybe even before the NHL Draft, to lock up Dorofeyev and ship out Karlsson. That’s how this franchise operates. Always has. Always will.
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