Mark Stone Cemented His Legacy Last Night As The Greatest Salary Cap Circumventer The Game Of Hockey Has Ever Seen. Gretzky Could Never
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.Mark Stone dons a single 'C' on the chest of his Golden Knights sweater. It is common practice for teams to embroider a 'C' onto the jersey of their captain. Though I'm sure if you got your hands on Mark Stone's jersey and gave it a thorough examination, you'd find another 'C' stitched directly underneath it. Yeah, you could call Mark Stone 'Cap' alright.
For Cap Circumvention.
Either this guy's body is so unbelievably dialed to fall apart at the All-Star Break and magically rejuvenate back to full health right as the playoffs begin, or something fishy is going on here. And yes, I'm aware the Golden Knights didn't make the playoffs in 2022 so that might take away from the argument slightly. But you know the plan was for Eichel to carry the team to the playoffs and have Mark Stone stashed away there for game 1 after another couple of weeks to rest up. That was just a failure to execute on Vegas' part.
Now they have it figured out.
Here's a guy whose lacerated spleen was so bad that he couldn't even pick up a hockey stick last week. But fortunately the man's spleen exploded into a billion little pieces just a couple weeks before the trade deadline. So that allowed the Golden Knights to stash his $9.5M cap hit on LTIR for the rest of the regular season, which then opened up enough space for Vegas to trade for Tomas Hertl and Noah Hanifin--a combined $8.4M cap hit. Now that we're in the playoffs, the salary cap is made up and means nothing. So with Mark Stone being a modern medical marvel, his spleen happens to heal up just in time to not only be ready for game 1 but to score the opening goal just 83 seconds into the game. He couldn't even pick up a hockey stick last week, yet he had enough in the tank to play the 2nd most minutes out of Vegas' forwards last night.
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And the real kicker to top it all off?
Tomas Hertl gets on the board as Noah Hanifin picked up his 2nd primary assist of the night. The Vegas Golden Knights have an extra $9.2M worth of fire power on their team these playoffs, and those guys combined for 4 points last night in a 4-3 win.
People are going to hate, but you have to admit it's sick to watch an organization simply not give a shit. There's no need to hide it. They don't care that everybody knows exactly what they are doing. All they care about is winning games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They won 16 of them last year, and now they're 15 away from it again this year. That's punk rock.