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OT: Success of the Golden Knights

BG

Well-known member
There has been a lot written recently about Vegas' success. I thought rather than have this lost in another thread, that it deserved a discussion of it's own.

There's been a lot of talk about how this happened, talking about other GMs, the expansion rules, about how this is not good for the game.

It's an incredible story, and there isn't any one thing that brought about this success - it really is a combination of good planning, execution, and a boatload of fortune.

Fans of other teams are angry because of the immediate success of this team, angry that while other teams are suffering through long rebuilds - an upstart is playing for the Cup.

When I look at the expansion rules, I think the single biggest factor leading to a successful draft was the number of teams they were able to select from. 30 selections is enough to fill an NHL roster, and the top end of an AHL team. That each team could only protect a single goaltender also put Vegas a step ahead of at least a dozen teams (who also wish they could pay the league to force a good goalie onto their team).

That said, I ask you this...

Who are the real losers this season, post Vegas expansion?

Is it the teams that had to make side deals?

- Well, truth is, those teams were already flush with talent - given that they had too many players to protect. Comparing the standings from year-to-year, Pittsburgh and Columbus dropped the most (11pts each), but both made the playoffs. Arguments could be made that Florida would probably have liked to have had some of that scoring depth back as they struggled on the bubble.

Is it the teams that Vegas has surpassed in the standings?

- Simply put, yes. Particularly in their own division/conference. Any team that felt like they escaped having to give up a good expansion asset - is now a step behind the Vegas franchise.

Is it hockey fans?

- Get over yourselves.

Will NHL GM's learn anything from this?

- That is a firm 'NO'. Most of the bad decisions made by NHL GM's are repeated over and over again. If there is one thing I think will happen however, is that the teams/league will be much better prepared for future expansion (in the next 2-3 seasons), and GM's will be less likely to give out NMC contracts on short-term contracts to veteran players.

How do NHL player's feel about this?

- Honestly, I think it was the "expansion" tag given to the team that soured players from wanting to join. In the future, I could see more players waiving trade clauses or giving serious free agent attention to future expansion teams. I haven't heard a single bad quip from an NHL player when asked about Vegas' success, and most talk about it with a big smile on their faces.

What do you think?
 
Regarding the reason for Vegas's success:

The opinion I've heard thrown around most often among my friends & co-workers is that Vegas's success points to Bettman rigging the expansion draft with unfair rules, in order to make Vegas a success right off the bat. I always push back against that opinion, though.

First and foremost, I think the abundance of idiotic GM's currently employed in the NHL is far and away the biggest reason for Vegas's success. Some teams twisted themselves into knots trying to prevent Vegas from taking a certain player, and lost multiple better players & picks as a result. Other teams could have gotten out of the expansion draft jam they were in by buying out older players with NMC's, but declined to do so out of some misguided sense of loyalty. Some teams were overly paranoid that Vegas would snag their promising young backup goalies, and lost truly excellent skaters as a result.

Had every team just simply protected their 7 best forwards, 3 best defenseman and best goalie, and taken full advantage of their options under the CBA to clear out veterans with NMC's who weren't worth protecting, I doubt the Vegas team that would've come out of that draft would've made the playoffs, let alone make the Cup final & most likely end up as Cup champions.

Regarding the expansion draft rules:

The other thing I'd say is that I do think it was a very good idea for the league to put together expansion rules that gave Vegas an actual shot at fielding a competitive team. Because realistically, the NHL's last round of expansion (Minnesota, Nashville, Atlanta, Columbus) was kind of a disaster. Nashville & Minnesota were forced to play dull trap hockey for years in order to remain somewhat competitive, and the Thrashers & Blue Jackets were a complete disaster on the ice.

Either way, that's a terrible way to build a new fanbase and sell hockey in a non-traditional market. And time was of the essence for Vegas, with the NFL arriving in a couple of years and the NBA likely not far behind. If Vegas came out of the gate with a couple of 50+ loss seasons, the team probably wouldn't have survived for long.

Regarding my person feelings on Vegas's success:

All of the above being said, I am absolutely not on the Vegas bandwagon, and I'll be extremely disappointed if they win the Cup.

As a die-hard Leaf fan in his 30's who's never even seen his team get to a Cup final, there's just no way I can get behind this as a "feel good story". I know it's petty jealousy, but it'll turn my stomach if a bunch of bandwagon-jumping, first-year hockey fans get to celebrate a Cup championship right off the bat.
 
I think we can talk about the expansion rules all we want, but reality is, LV is where they are now because they are LUCKY.

Yes, all due respect to their players and their GM, and they are indeed doing a very good job. But you look up and down their roster, pretty much EVERY SINGLE PLAYER is having a career year. Some of them even producing 2x their career average.

You can argue it's the coach who created this environment to allow them to perform, but I don't personally buy that argument. If they are nowhere near where they are this season, and gravitate much closer towards their career average the next season then you know this is true.

I'll be very disappointed too, if LVK go on to win it all, but this has been a season where the stars lined up for them in the regular season and in the playoff.

Think about this - they have only lost THREE GAMES in the first 3 rounds of the playoff. And this lineup is NOWHERE near as dominating as that.
 
I'm torn between your feelings LGM and thinking that this is great to show the old school truculence types how the game has passed them by.

Ultimately I land on not wanting Vegas to win it all, but still quite pleased with their success. At this point I hope the Caps pull it out, cause I don't want Tampa winning either.

I also don't think the expansion draft was stacked in Vegas' favour - nearly everyone agreed, after seeing their roster, that contending for a playoff spot would be impressive. Really though, I think Gallant and Fleury are the two single biggest contributing pieces to their success.
 
I don’t want them to win, but I’m so impressed by them that I can only tip my hat if they do.

Hopefully OV muscles the Caps to the final and then ultimately overpowers Vegas in seven games. That’s the ending I want because I don’t want TB winning it all either.
 
I think we can talk about the expansion rules all we want, but reality is, LV is where they are now because they are LUCKY.

Yes, all due respect to their players and their GM, and they are indeed doing a very good job. But you look up and down their roster, pretty much EVERY SINGLE PLAYER is having a career year. Some of them even producing 2x their career average.

A couple of factors going into that "luck". First, basically their entire team is between 22 and 27, so the prime ages for top production. Second, these guys are getting minutes and roles that they haven't received elsewhere. So lucky? Yes, but also by design. But that also means their success is not sustainable in the long run.

I think the biggest thing this says is that there is a ****load of good hockey players out there that are currently being undervalued/underutilized by their teams.

Unlike in the past, no one can argue this round of expansion water-downed the league. It gave opportunities to players who deserved them.
 
I do think the NHL "rigged" the draft in order to give Vegas a non-horrifically-bad team. They knew the Vegas market was basically brand new to sports, so having a team come in and put up 40 points in their first year was just not an option. They likely set up the rules to give Vegas some good secondary options, and intended them to be a ~80 point team.

Where Vegas "won" was having their management basically convince other teams to give them extra stuff for free. They played the system to be able to take on guys like Clarkson while adding extra picks and pieces, and took advantage of teams who got screwed in the rules to get legit solid pieces like Neal and Fleury. I don't think the NHL quite anticipated how much cap room they had to play with, and how they could parlay that into extra picks and pieces. They probably expected that Vegas would simply take a lot of guys like Emelin who were decent players but overpaid, and didn't think that they would pull off quite the arbitrage moment that they did.

I would expect that going forward, teams will simply figure out a way to write the NMC to let them keep guys unprotected for the next expansion draft. The NHL might also be a little less generous to the next expansion team, especially if it's in a market they're less worried about.

The more interesting thing will be to see how Vegas does next year. Have they built the foundation for a true top team in the league, or do they fall back to the middle next year after riding the expansion high all year?
 
I think you can only make the "rigged" argument from on top of the wreckage of previous expansion teams. Yeah, Vegas was "rigged" in comparison to that, but by any reasonable reading, the Vegas expansion draft rules were fair. Take a look through the league's protected lists and you see a pretty big pile of useless bodies that there was apparently enough space to protect.

I don't buy that a team like Nashville got "screwed" when Nashville protected Calle Jarnkrok instead of Neal. I also don't buy that Pittsburgh got screwed by losing the guy they sat in back to back Cup runs when there was a lot of chatter leading up to the expansion draft that the Penguins were happy they were clearing that cap space.

That Vegas ignored size in their drafting, while it appears that almost nobody else ignored size in their protecting is a massive story as well. It's kicks one of the league's truisms right in the dick.

Teams got screwed by a combination of bad contract management (NMC's for everyone!!) and poor expansion draft protection slot management. If we did a
"common sense" protection slot right now, Vegas ends up drafting a 80 point team.
 
McPhee deserves tons of credit for taking the leverage and cap space that's given to him and optimize his roster in weeks of negotiation with the other 30 GMs ... that's good GM work.

And yes, they did go "un-traditional" in roster building, taking undersized players who 'can play', taking players in their prime age for 'breakout' season.

And coaching also deserves tons of credit, for getting everyone to play the system.

Still, even with all that, they would NOT get to the cup finals without a LOT of luck on their side. The fact EVERY PLAYER is having a career year is just pure luck.

I mean, Karlsson, who has been a 20ish pts player in his first 2 seasons, is now a PPG forward? And carry that on to the playoff and continue to be PPG? That's not just 'growth', cause normal player development doesn't give you a 3x production increase over 1 summer, even with more minutes, even with bigger role, even with the player hitting the sweet spot on development.

Or, Marchessault, an undrafted 27 year old, who went from 50 pts player to another PPG player?

Or even Engelland, a 36 year old vet (!!) who is a career 10ish points dman, all of a sudden doubles his production and scored 25 pts. I don't think he 'developed' at age 36.

So this is not to take anything away from teir management and coaching, but the best they could do was to give their team a chance to succeed. And to get to the SC Finals, with only losing 3 games in the entire playoff run up to this point, is WAY MORE than something you can plan or even hope for in the beginning of the season.

Or
 
It's a lunchpail team, with a bunch of players playing for contracts with chips on their shoulders.

I agree that the next couple of seasons will be the real test. Between actual on-ice performance, and navigating the contract situation of a successful team will require more of whatever koolaid they've been drinking.

As for a "rigged draft" - I'm sure it was negotiated, like everything else, before the $500 million expansion fee was issued.
 
Gallant seems to be a really good coach as well. Florida hasn't been the same without him behind the bench either. Vegas' play style is pretty insane to watch.
 
McPhee deserves tons of credit for taking the leverage and cap space that's given to him and optimize his roster in weeks of negotiation with the other 30 GMs ... that's good GM work.
I'll have to admit; I didn't think much of McPhee as a GM prior to him taking the Vegas gig.

"I would rather have a general who was lucky than one who was good"

Napoleon Bonaparte
 
It's interesting, I think most new teams would look to build up star talent through the draft. As of today, the Golden Knights have/had a lot of picks - but not a lot of lottery tickets that will get them a potential franchise player.
 
It's a lunchpail team, with a bunch of players playing for contracts with chips on their shoulders.

It's not a lunchpail team at all. It's a bunch of guys who were considered incomplete, small skill players by their previous organizations and deemed expendable.

Babcock said something similar when he was challenged on it during our mid season slump. He claimed it was a bunch of "Hyman's and Brown's", but that was wrong then and wrong now.

Perron, Haula, Smith were all skilled players stuck playing down lineup by various coaches, who were considered flawed for whatever reason. These weren't lunchpail guys at all.

I agree that the next couple of seasons will be the real test. Between actual on-ice performance, and navigating the contract situation of a successful team will require more of whatever koolaid they've been drinking.

They have so much cap space, and so many high end picks/prospects on the way. I'd be surprised if they didn't end up with a legit franchise player by this summer, and a steady stream of good, cheap kids replacing guys like Perron, etc who price themselves out of Vegas in the next 2-3 years.

As for a "rigged draft" - I'm sure it was negotiated, like everything else, before the $500 million expansion fee was issued.

I think the league realized that 1) it's a massive mistake to start a franchise off from absolute zero like previous expansion franchises started. 2) Smart business people aren't going to pay 100's of millions in expansion fees only to potentially lose buckets of money every year because the team sucks and no one will pay to watch a 60 point team for 5 years.

The league ****ed up expansion in the past and got it right this time around. For the rest of the league, expansion was ridiculously easy in the past and required a bit of management this time around and they ****ed it up really, really hard. Embarrassingly bad job by about half of the league's GM's.
 
By lunchpail - I meant hard-working and hungry, not to be construed with unskilled.
 
Gallant seems to be a really good coach as well. Florida hasn't been the same without him behind the bench either. Vegas' play style is pretty insane to watch.

I love watching them sustain possession by utilizing the back pass. Want to talk about finding inefficiencies and exploiting them? Every other team in the league would rather force their way to centre and dump in with poor chance of getting the puck back when they get squeezed by the neutral zone trap. The Vegas forwards get cut off, and turn around, pass back to their defenders and regroup, and they do it a lot. It's a beautiful adjustment that I've never seen used so often. Sometimes they take 2-3 cracks at a trap before they find room to move through the neutral zone with speed. When they do dump, it's usually a chip and chase they initiate closer to the opposition blueline where they're on top of the opposition defence already, significantly improving the chance of a 50/50 battle deep in the offensive zone.


Gallant has done a ****ing magical job building a system where a group of little guys get to play keep away from big guys all night, and don't spend a lot of time chasing the puck held by bigger guys that they can be out muscled by.
 
The other lucky bounce, has been team chemistry. Sometimes you put players together on a line and it just doesn't work, the scoring lines for Vegas were productive all season long.
 
Largely a testament to the stupidity of NHL GMs. I'm just glad Leipsic didn't burn the Leafs for protecting Matt Martin.

Gallant is proving to be quite the awesome coach. Loved his statement about not punishing young guys for mistakes (very Pat Quinn of him). I hope Mike was paying attention.
 
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