The Vegas Golden Knights are a sensational expansion team in the Stanley Cup Finals. The team from Nevada started the season as a safe lottery team to surprise everyone. Is the big coup a success and how was that actually possible? A look at what is probably the biggest Cinderella story of this sports year. All Stanley Cup Final matches will be broadcast live on DAZN. Game 1 takes place at 2am in Las Vegas.
A year ago, the Vegas Golden Knights had just two players in the squad. 21-year-old Reid Duke and Russian star Vadim Shipachyov.
Neither of them will compete in the Stanley Cup Finals 2018. While Duke was with the Chicago farm team, Shipachyov was homesick. The potential Golden Knights franchise player played just three games and rejoined SKA St. Petersburg in KHL after a few months.
But what was already going according to plan in the Nevada desert this season? Of course, there was euphoria in the city of sin, but few expected success in the gamblers’ paradise. But now, in their first season, the Expansion Team are fighting for the maximum result, winning the Stanley Cup – only the St. Louis Blues in 1968, when they lost 4-0 to Montreal Canadiens, came so close to this sensation. However, only twelve teams played in the NHL at that time.
Exactly 50 years later it will be 31, soon 32, when Seattle also receives a team as expected. So how on earth was it possible to leave at least 29 teams behind in the first year of the franchise’s existence?
Even general manager and architect of the dream factory, George McPhee, who probably had to answer this question a hundred times, has no plausible answer. “It’s hard to imagine a real fairy tale,” said the GM after the decisive victory in the Western Conference Finals against the Winnipeg Jets. “We didn’t expect this, but the longer the season went on, we realized we had a good team.”
Most experts and betting providers saw this completely differently before the season. Vegas had a quota of 200:1 on winning the cup, the over/under for points in the regular season was 68, only Ottawa Senators (67) and Buffalo Sabres (62) undercut. The newcomer, on the other hand, collected 109 points and secured the Pacific Division from established forces such as Anaheim and San Jose.
If you looked at the squad before the season, nobody would have expected this. Certainly, the conditions for Vegas were better than for other expansion teams before, but the Knights sometimes dispensed with well-known players who would have been available and instead focused on young, hungry players who previously did not get the chance they might have deserved in their teams.
Nevertheless, McPhee also admitted that the expansion rules were “beneficial” for Vegas. Each team could protect seven forwards, three defenders and one goalie or eight skaters and one goalie. Players with no-move clauses had to be protected, and first and second year players were excluded as draft options.
Some teams had to make such tough decisions, albeit sweetened by $17 million that every other franchise received from the Knights’ 500 million inaugural money. For example, the Florida Panthers were unable (and unwilling to pay for) their top wrestler Jonathan Marchessault, who scored 30 goals last season and was the team’s second-best scorer.
From Pittsburgh, Vegas got a real franchise goalie in Marc-Andre Fleury and Nashville had to give up an important part of their team with Winger James Neal after the Predators moved into the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in their history.
Apart from that, however, the Golden Knights were rather small, with only seven players over 30 in the current squad: “I had dinner with owner James Foley and he explained the plan to me,” Neal recalled a conversation before the season. “He wanted to hit the playoffs in three years and win a cup in six seasons.”
This schedule is now more than outdated, especially as some of the young drafted players turned out to be real hits. Top scorer William Karlsson was just a Fourth Liner in the Columbus Blue Jackets the previous year with a career high of 25 points, and scored 43 goals and 78 points for Vegas. I don’t think anyone in Nevada expected him to develop in this way either.
Players like Center Erik Haula, Winger Alex Tuch or defender Nate Schmidt also made a real leap and made sure that this team may not have a real star, but is incredibly low positioned. This was also highlighted by John Stevens, head coach of the Los Angeles Kings, after his team was swept by Vegas in the first round.
Star defender Drew Doughty smiled at the Knights’ success story during the Regular Season and described it as sweet. The quote “There is no way they will be better than us at the end of the season,” flew Doughty after the 0:4 tremendously around the ears. In the Vegas cabin, this saying is still hanging on the wall.
However, the All-Star is not the only one who underestimated the expansion team. Only in the playoffs did the underdogs finally earn the respect they undoubtedly deserved. “They have incredibly fast players,” Stevens continued. “You can switch as fast as no other team. Their attackers work so hard and chase you across the ice, it’s incredible.”
In addition, Fleury has a goalie who, at 33, proves once again that he is one of the best in the league after losing the starter job in Pittsburgh to the much younger Matt Murray. In 15 games, Superstar Sidney Crosby’s best friend only had to play 27 times – even though Vegas allows 33.8 shots per game. More shots could only be fired by teams that had to cancel their sails in the first round.
The attackers of the San Jose Sharks and the Winnipeg Jets despaired in the following playoff rounds at the triple champion. “He is the best Goaltender of the playoffs,” Shark coach Peter DeBoer admitted bluntly. “He’s got so many big saves, they’re rarely behind.” Vegas played mostly very defensively and set the decisive pinpricks with the fast Karlsson and Marchessault.
Even the highly favored Winnipeg, after an epic seven-game series against Nashville, found no solution to this actually simple formula. “We didn’t get an easy offense, everything was one fight,” Jets coach Paul Maurice analyzed. So the Golden Knights finally decided the series clearly with 4:1, after they were in the white hell of Winnipeg in game 1 still with 2:4 in all concerns and little spoke for the expansion team.
But like the whole season, Vegas surprised everyone again and won the next four games. All it takes now is the same number of victories for the ultimate coronation.
The Washington Capitals are also a chronically underestimated team waiting there, overcoming the second round in the playoffs with superstar Alex Ovechkin for the first time in 20 years, finally eliminating the Penguins with Crosby after three attempts and also countering favourite Tampa Bay in game 7, after the capitals after game 5 and a 2:3 were already written off by many. In the end, the Bolts did not score in the last two games.
Vegas will build on their home strength in this duel, while in their home T-Mobile Arena the Golden Knights lost just one game (victories) – and only after double extra time against the Sharks. Lord Stanley is not six years away, but only a few games.
“I didn’t want to be here just to reach the playoffs,” said Neal after the finals. “I wanted to lead this team to the Stanley Cup Finals and everyone here had this claim before the season. It was all about creating a culture and faith.”
Did Neal and his colleagues really believe this? I guess you’ll never know, and it’s completely irrelevant. Whether Vegas can actually lift the cup or not, it’s the most incredible story ever in the NHL.