Nate Schmidt was traded to the Vancouver Canucks by the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday for a third-round pick in the 2022 NHL Draft.
The 29-year-old defenseman scored 31 points (seven goals, 24 assists) in 59 regular-season games and nine points (two goals, seven assists) in 20 postseason games for Vegas last season.
Schmidt has five seasons remaining on a six-year contract he signed with the Golden Knights on Oct. 25, 2018 ($5.95 million average annual value).
The trade was announced by Vancouver one minute before Vegas announced it had signed defenseman Alex Pietrangelo to a seven-year, $61.6 million contract ($8.8 million AAV).
“I’ve said to you before that this game, this business, the job that I have, often requires really hard decisions on good people,” Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon said. “I’ve never worked with a finer man in my career than Nate, an incredibly popular player in our community, an incredible ambassador, community person that did charity work, a top-pairing defenseman on our team for his entire three years. There is only one scenario, one situation, where we would have considered a trade involving Nate Schmidt, and that was exactly the situation that presented ourselves with the opportunity to add Alex to our team.”
Schmidt was selected by Vegas from the Washington Capitals at the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft. He has scored 140 points (29 goals, 111 assists) in 396 NHL games with the Golden Knights and Capitals.
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