3 Golden Knights Players Who Won’t Be Back Next Season

The Vegas Golden Knights have once again dealt with a lot of more serious injuries around trade deadline time and brought in multiple new faces to help deal with that and give the team the best shot at winning the Stanley Cup again. Heading into the summer, there will be a lot of tough decisions made on who stays and who goes.

Chandler Stephenson

Chandler Stephenson has outplayed his contract by a wide margin these past few seasons and will be looking for a big raise and a contract with some term on it. He has done a lot for the Golden Knights, but with others needing contracts and new faces coming in, there just won't be enough cap room to keep him around. Stephenson will finally be looking to cash in and he already has two Stanley Cups in his career.

Anthony Mantha

The acquisition of Anthony Mantha was one of those decisions where the Golden Knights were holding onto assets to see if they could land some other big fish, but also wanted to add a player who could be effective in somewhat replacing Mark Stone for the remainder of the regular season at the very least. Mantha will do his job, but even though he isn't going to get as much money on his next deal as he is making on his current one, Vegas has other players to worry about and won't necessarily have room for him.

Alec Martinez

A while back, Alec Martinez was rumored to be getting shipped by the Golden Knights in order to find cap space to upgrade at the deadline. These plans changed once Stone went down to injury, but it revealed that Martinez is the player that is likely on his way out. If Vegas intends on keeping Noah Hanifin, letting Martinez hit free agency in the offseason makes the most sense. It opens up money and a spot in the lineup. Right now, the Golden Knights have seven very capable defensemen that should be playing every night. They will get that down to six by the start of next season.