Golden Knights are real deal, but will they be good again next season?
Expansion franchise’s success in first year a reflection of the NHL’s unpredictability
Here is an approximation of the monthly reaction from NHL observers about the Vegas Golden Knights:
October: Aw, that’s cute, Vegas has won some games.
November: Look at those little scamps go!
December: Still a small sample size, everyone.
January: Just wait until they get caved in for the whole second half.
February: WTF.
March: Seriously, WTF. After dispatching the Vancouver Canucks 4-1 on Tuesday, Vegas has nine games left to lock down the final numbers for the collection of records it will set for an NHL expansion franchise. It long ago broke all the previous marks, and with 99 points already and eight points up on San Jose, Vegas is a lock to shatter the 100-point mark and almost certainly will win the Pacific Division.
All with a collection of players the rest of the league collectively deemed expendable.
There is plenty of evidence the Knights are not a fluke, at least in terms of how we typically think of one. They have not won an absurd number of close games, their underlying fancy stats are decent, and they don’t have lights-out special teams that would swing an inordinate number of games.
They are second in goals scored and seventh in goals allowed, giving them a goal differential of plus-48, right in line with their place in the standings. And while they have an excellent home record, the suggestion that the team has benefited particularly from visiting teams that stay out all night in casinos and, ahem, other establishments, is undercut by the fact Vegas has won more road games than every team in the league other than Tampa, Nashville and Los Angeles.
Also, the Jets have won more home games than Vegas, and I don’t believe I’ve ever heard someone suggest this is due to the Winnipeg flu.
So, what happened? When the expansion draft took place, in a process that was admittedly torqued to allow Vegas a chance to compete on better footing than has happened in previous expansions, general manager George McPhee was widely lauded for putting an emphasis on youth and draft picks, and specifically for taking some players who were expected to be flipped for prospects and picks later in the season. In a league where mediocrity kills, an expansion team has the builtin advantage of being bad for a couple of seasons. It allows them to stockpile elite prospects. No one will accuse such a team of tanking.
Then Vegas won eight of their first nine games and that was that.
I admit that as the Vegas train has chugged along, it has been fun to consider the team’s success as an indictment of the rest of the league. There is something kind of hilarious about a collection of Good Hockey Men deciding which players to leave unprotected, and in some cases even making side deals with McPhee to ensure he would leave certain unprotected players alone, then having that group of castoffs beat everyone with a sack of hammers.
Two of the top four Vegas scorers, Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith, both came via the Florida Panthers (as did the Knights’ coach, Gerard Gallant). The Panthers presently sit outside the playoff bubble, and one would think general manager Dale Tallon has had a few awkward conversations recently with his boss.
But while some teams should feel embarrassed by Vegas doing in a matter of months what they have been unable to do for many years (side eye to the Buffalo Sabres), it’s just as likely the crazy Vegas story is not as much about the rest of the league’s incompetence as it is about the utter randomness of hockey.
The NHL, for all the effort and time spent on roster assembly, coaching, and the actual playing of games, functions like a results generator that routinely spits out some outliers.
The L.A. Kings won two Stanley Cups in three years, then missed the playoffs. Chicago finished first in the West with 109 points last year and is last in their division this year. Montreal’s last four seasons: bad, good, bad, good. Ottawa went from bad to good and right back to bad again.
When you have a game in which scoring chances are few, as is the case in most NHL contests on most nights, the likelihood that weird stuff happens increases.
Consider William Karlsson, plucked from the roster of the Columbus Blue Jackets because McPhee agreed to take the anchor of David Clarkson’s contract (and two draft picks; it was a big anchor) if the Jackets would make Karlsson available. He has scored 39 goals for Vegas.
Karlsson, though, played 162 games for Columbus over the previous two seasons and scored 15 goals. This season he is shooting at 23.5 per cent, by far the best rate in the league. Some of that spike could be due to usage and opportunity, but it’s fair to say the NHL didn’t consider Karlsson an elite sniper in waiting, otherwise some other team would have acquired him.
The best evidence of whether McPhee is a genius or was blessed with good fortune this season will probably come from the GM himself this summer. Will he be aggressive in trying to win again, or cautious, in the expectation that his collection of non-stars will regress next season?
I would bet on the latter, but the temptation to do otherwise will be there. Weird stuff happens.