SPORTS Stunning season
How Vegas became NHL’s best expansion team
No one saw this coming – the Gerard Gallant coached Vegas Golden Knights becoming the NHL’s best expansion team.
Before Gerard Gallant embarked on his journey to coach the expansion Vegas Golden Knights, he and former boss Doug MacLean sat down for breakfast and wondered what was ahead.
“He didn’t know what the situation was,” MacLean said. “He thought it was going to be tough.”
No one saw this coming not Gallant, general manager George McPhee, their players, Vegas odds makers or anyone in hockey. Thanks to a never before-seen combination of speed, motivation, confidence and goaltending, the Golden Knights already set the NHL record for victories by a first-year expansion team, sit comfortably atop the Pacific Division and are a near-lock to make the playoffs.
Vegas stockpiled draft picks and young talent with the longterm future in mind. It also got franchise goaltender Marc Andre Fleury, 50-point producer Jonathan Marchessault and 27-goal-scorer William Karlsson and went from the league’s most pleasant surprise to a legitimate Stanley Cup contender.
“Didn’t think we’d be in first place at this time of the year, but the way they played and the confidence they got over the first 10 games, it grew with the team,” Gallant said. “We’re a good hockey team, and we know it and when we play our game we’ve got a chance to beat anybody.”
With Bill Foley paying $500 million to get a team, commissioner Gary Bettman sought to ensure Vegas would be competitive, so McPhee got to pick from the best player pool of any expansion franchise thus far. Even with that advantage, the Golden Knights on paper looked like a team lacking topend scorers and defencemen that would need Fleury to steal games.
“Everybody wanted them to be competitive, but they wanted them to be competitive enough but miss the playoffs by seven or eight points,” said MacLean, whose expansion 2000-01 Columbus Blue Jackets won just 28 games. “This has caught them off-guard.”
The Westgate sports book opened the Golden Knights 200-1 to win the Cup and sold a handful tickets when they fell to 500-1 over the summer. After Westgate vice-president Jay Kornegay said “no one cared to bet them early,” he and his colleagues around Las Vegas risk losing a ton of money on futures wagers for them to win the Pacific Division, Western Conference and the Cup.
Off the ice, the Golden Knights became a rallying point for the community before they even played a game after the Oct. 1 shooting on the Strip killed 58 people and injured hundreds more.
They won their first three and nine of their first 10, and Bettman said “the bonding that has gone on is something that’s extraordinary.”