Revisiting the construction of the Vegas Golden Knights

The Vegas Golden Knights opened the 2018 season with the worst odds to win the Stanley Cup, but open their Stanley Cup Finals series tonight vs. the Washington Capitals. 

Back in August, the Golden Knights were given 200/1 odds to win the Stanley Cup, while the Capitals had 10/1 odds. If you would have put just $50 on the Golden Knights before the season started, you’d be eagerly awaiting a $10,000 payday in the next couple of weeks. Bookmakers and Casinos are shaking in their boots that Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals can put an end to the Golden Knights’ movie-like season. 

Throughout the season, Vegas never really got any love. Even once they won the Pacific Division, many picked them to be upset in the first round—58 percent of our Twitter Followers picked the Los Angeles Kings.

Nothing like this has ever happened before. Not even General Manager George McPhee could have predicted this. So how did it happen? I’m going to go back to before they even had a roster and take a look at how the Golden Knights were built and how they accomplished what they’ve accomplished. 

The Trades

McPhee did a good job leading up to the expansion draft of pushing other GM’s into a corner and forcing them to give up assets to protect players they wanted to keep. They acquired 2017 second, fifth and sixth round picks, a 2018 fourth round pick and forward Nikita Gusev from the Sabres, Hurricanes and Lightning in exchange for Expansion Draft considerations, but those weren’t even their big moves. 

William Karlsson

The Blue Jackets deemed Karlsson expendable and were O.K. with losing him versus some of their other players. In order to ensure that Vegas would take Karlsson, the Blue Jackets gave the Golden Knights a 2017 first round pick (No.24 overall), a 2019 second round pick and David Clarkson’s contract. 

Karlsson took over as their No.1 centre and ended up finishing the year third in the NHL in goals (43) and tied for 23rd in points (78). Karlsson is also near a point-per-game in the playoffs, having collected 13 points (6G / 7A) in the first 15 games. 

Jonathan Marchessault & Reilly Smith

Smith was set to have his five-year, $25 million ($5.0M AAV) extension kick in at the start of the 2018 season and the Panthers were desperate to get it off of the books. In order to ship him off to Vegas, the Golden Knights got Marchessault in the Expansion Draft and Reilly Smith for a 2018 fourth-round pick. Just like that, the Golden Knights had their top-line of Marchessault—Karlsson—Smith. 

The trio ended up playing 708:33 together at 5v5 and dominated the opposition. Marchessault—Karlsson—Smith combined for a 55.24 CorsiFor%, 67.14 GoalsFor% and 55.93 ScoringChancesFor%—placing them firmly among the best lines in hockey.

Alex Tuch & Erik Haula

The Minnesota Wild were in as tough of a spot as any team at the Expansion Draft, leaving studs like Matt Dumba and Eric Staal exposed to the Golden Knights. To ensure McPhee would keep his hands off of them, the Wild offered Vegas one of their top prospects (Tuch) to take Haula. Tuch was the No.18 overall pick in 2014 and had a really good rookie season, scoring 15 goals with 22 assists (37 points) in 78 games. He played a middle-six role all season and now skates on a line with Haula and James Neal to make up the Golden Knights second line heading into the Stanley Cup Finals. Dumba would have been a great addition to their blueline, but now they have a 22-year-old power-forward who figures to be in their top-6 for years and they got him for free. 

Shea Theodore 

Lastly, the Ducks sent Theodore to Vegas so that the Golden Knights would take Clayton Stoner instead of defensemen Sami Vatanen and Josh Manson. Theodore was another former first round pick (No.26 overall in 2013) and he recorded 29 points (6G / 23A) in 61 games after flashing signs of greatness in the Ducks’ organization in years prior. 

Theodore averaged 20:21 TOI/GM and spent the majority of the year dragging Deryk Engelland around—he had a 49.31 CF% in 794:10 5v5 TOI with Engelland and a 57.93 CF% in 222:46 away from the pugilist defenseman. He joins Brayden McNabb, Nate Schmidt and Colin Miller as the future of the Golden Knights blueline. 

The Expansion Draft

Those trades were the moves that seem to really push the Golden Knights over the edge, but they also did some nice work in the Expansion Draft. After months of scouting and planning, McPhee also added key pieces Marc-Andre Fleury, James Neal, David Perron and the aforementioned defensemen to build a winner. 

They also picked players with limited term on their contract like Luca Sbisa, Oscar Lindberg, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Jason Garrison to give them roster flexibility in the coming years. 

The Season

One of the craziest parts of the Golden Knights story is the Vadim Shipachyov saga. Shipachyov was one of the first players named to the Golden Knights’ roster and their first big free agent signing. The Russian forward came to North America after scoring 190 points (55G / 135A) in 153 KHL games over his last three seasons. Shipachyov projected to be the Golden Knights’ top-line centre, but was sent down to the AHL at the start of the season because of a roster shuffle and the relationship was damaged immediately. Overall, he had one goal in three games for Vegas and went back to Russia where he picked up nine goals and 16 assists (25 points) in 22 games with St. Petersburg SKA. The Golden Knights were down their top centre immediately. Not a good start.

The Golden Knights started their inaugural season on a three-game winning streak before losing their first game to the Detroit Red Wings. Lucky start? Nope. They went on to win the next five games to give them an 8-1-0 start, setting the hockey world on fire. 

Through November, the Golden Knights were 15-8-1 (10th in the NHL) and averaging 3.46 goals for per game with a middle of the pack power-play. 

Things kept getting better. They went on to win 12 of their next 14 games, including an eight-game winning streak at the end of December. Through January 2nd, the Golden Knights had the second-best record in hockey (26-9-2), behind only the Tampa Bay Lightning. 

Pundits were starting to buy-in, but somehow not everyone was sold on them. How can you blame them? This was an expansion team, who had only lost 11 games in three months. From that point forward, Vegas went 23-13-5 in the second half of the season—among the top-10 in the NHL and actually won the Pacific Division by eight points. 

Overall, they finished fifth in the NHL in goals for (3.27), eighth in goals against (2.74), ninth in ScoringChancesFor% (51.73%), t-9th in PP% (21.4%), t-10th in PK% (81.4%) and 13th in CF% (50.84%). 

It has been a remarkable season, but the job is not done. Furthermore, the Washington Capitals red-hot and provide a very stiff test for everyone’s favourite expansion team. In Hollywood, the Golden Knights will win the Stanley Cup, but who knows how it will shake out in real-life.