Marc-Andre Fleury’s future with Golden Knights remains unclear

The Golden Knights made their first goaltending move of the offseason by signing Robin Lehner to a five-year, $25 million extension Saturday.

In many ways, that was the easy part. What comes next could be far more challenging.

The Knights now have less than $1 million in cap space and one of the NHL’s most expensive goaltending tandems. General manager Kelly McCrimmon said keeping Lehner and Marc-Andre Fleury is an option. But it’s a difficult one, so the possibility certainly exists that Fleury has played his final game with the team.

“We have a ton of respect for Marc-Andre Fleury,” McCrimmon said. “We will try to make good decisions here as we move along, but at the same time, if you don’t make the hard decisions sometimes, you’re not doing your job as well as you should be. What’s easiest isn’t always what is right. That’s just an unfortunate part of being a manager of a professional sports team.”

With Lehner in the fold, the Knights have great goaltending but almost no roster flexibility. There’s no cap room to bring back restricted free agents Chandler Stephenson and Nick Cousins. There’s not even enough space to have forward Cody Glass in the NHL if the season started this week.

The team needs to trim somewhere. Goaltender makes sense, because only the Montreal Canadiens are projected to spend more on the position than the Knights. Clearing Fleury’s $7 million cap hit would allow the team to potentially re-sign players and pick up a replacement via trade or in what’s expected to be a deep goalie free-agent class.

But parting with Fleury, whom McCrimmon admitted has been the face of the franchise, won’t be a simple task. He’s a potential Hall of Famer and beloved by his teammates. His contract won’t be easy for another team to take on in a flat-cap world. And he turns 36 on Nov. 28.

If the Knights can’t trade Fleury — who has a 10-team no-trade list — even by retaining salary, they might have to consider buying him out. If the team can’t stomach that, it will have to move money out somewhere if it wants to get anything accomplished this offseason.

Fleury’s agent, Allan Walsh, did not respond to a request for comment Saturday.

“There’s a number of different ways that this could unfold,” McCrimmon said. “At this point we’re still evaluating what the next steps will be.”

Restricted free agents

The Knights have until Wednesday to give qualifying offers to Stephenson and Cousins. McCrimmon didn’t commit to bringing the two back, but said he was “real happy” with both.

“I felt Chandler was a great fit for us and really added some speed, some versatility to our team,” McCrimmon said. “Nick Cousins, who was a deadline deal, showed real poise with the puck. He was a real good complementary player. Those guys both made real good impressions.”

Strange market

McCrimmon said he’s not sure what to expect when free agency begins Friday.

The flat salary cap means a lot of teams don’t have much money to play with. And even some that do might be restricted by ownership because of the lack of revenue caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s going to be extremely interesting, and it’s going to have an impact on some players,” McCrimmon said. “I don’t know where that cutoff is, the types of players that it’s going to affect.”

Contact Ben Gotz at bgotz@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BenSGotz on Twitter.