Golden Knights have to answer Pavel Dorofeyev question when playoffs end originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Vegas Golden Knights haven't taken care of their Pavel Dorofeyev business ahead of time.
Instead, they'll have a contract question to answer whenever their playoff journey is over.
Dorofeyev is heading into an offseason in which he'll be a restricted free agent. Vegas will have some control over his future, but a contract agreement will still need to be reached at some point.
He's a 25-year old who scores boatloads of goals. It should be easy, right?
Matt Larkin, in a new article for Daily Faceoff, points out that it isn't quite as simple as it seems.
"Players who have scored at least 35 goals each of the past two seasons: Leon Draisaitl, Cole Caufield, Jason Robertson, Nikita Kucherov, Tage Thompson, Jake Guentzel, Kyle Connor, Alex DeBrincat, Mark Scheifele, Adrian Kempe, Brandon Hagel and…Dorofeyev," Larkin writes. "He keeps elite company as an established reliable goal scorer and, in theory, should be rewarded handsomely for it. But Dorofeyev, as much as anyone on this list, could benefit from a playoff scoring binge. He has one goal in 11 career postseason games. A franchise as ruthless as Vegas will want to know it trust him in clutch situations before shelling out a massive new contract."
Playoff production is both hugely impactful and also a little fickle. Sample sizes are small. Sometimes there's one specific matchup that works against a player.
But in reality, it's what teams notice. If Dorofeyev stays quiet in the postseason, it becomes harder to dish out a huge deal for him.
Still, it'd also be hard to see the Golden Knights giving up on a guy who scores so well during the regular season.
In reality, the dollar figure may be impacted by the level of this playoff run -- but it seems improbable that there's a case that could end without the Golden Knights securing the signature of Dorofeyev in some form.
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