Golden Knights’ Pavel Dorofeyev is set to get paid this summer
The Vegas Golden Knights earned a hard-fought overtime win on Tuesday night to take a 3-2 series lead in the second round against the Anaheim Ducks, and it came via a clutch goal from talented winger Pavel Dorofeyev.
Dorofeyev finished the regular season with 37 goals and 64 points in 82 games, and he’s kept his scoring touch going in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, as he’s now up to 7 goals in 11 appearances.
As a natural goalscorer playing on a team with some of the best playmakers in the league, Dorofeyev has been a perfect fit for the Golden Knights, and soon, it will be incumbent upon the team to compensate him for his contributions.
Dorofeyev is due a big raise as a restricted free agent this summer, and for a team with major salary cap commitments throughout the lineup already in place, and a desire to retain Rasmus Andersson as well, general manager Kelly McCrimmon may have to get creative to keep the skilled Russian in the fold.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed Dorofeyev’s well-timed ascension as he heads into the summer in need of a new contract.
Tyler Yaremchuk: I see a lot of it in the chat here… my brain, because I love the armchair GM stuff, it immediately goes to like, this guy is going to get paid this summer, and I used the PuckPedia contract comparable tool to pull up a few players who had similar years in RFA contract seasons, and you can kind of see here like, again, the dollars are all over the place because all these deals were kind of signed at different points. Whether it’s the Jesper Bratt deal, which I think is a really interesting comparable for a guy like Dorofeyev, but it’s gonna be somewhere from 7 to 10 percent of the cap. I don’t think you’ll quite get Timo Meier money because he’s a little bit younger and has one more year of RFA eligibility, but like I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Pavel Dorofeyev could be getting $7.5 to $8.5 million dollars this summer.
Carter Hutton: Yeah, he’s gonna cash in too especially, with the way that the cap is going and the situation that they’re in. So well earned, right, this guy knows how to find the back of the net ,and this is about timing, and this just goes to show you the staff that’s around them. You look at his linemates and guys that he’s playing with, and he’s taking full advantage of that, too and I think that’s been a big factor when you think about the way Jack Eichel plays the game. He is more of a disher than he is a shooter, Mitch Marner and just being in that role, this is unbelievable for him. So the timing, and then for him to carry that over at the playoffs when everything gets a little tighter and gets a little harder, and there’s also the factor of being in the Pacific having a little bit of an easier matchup against Utah and a younger Ducks team. He’s taken full advantage of it, and we are going to see him get paid. It’s going be interesting to see how that one plays out, Ty. We’ll see/
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…