😮

I thought it was a really cool addition bc in my lifetime I’ve never really even heard of an expansion team and was really surprised when they made it to the final

u realize that was game 1, you should've dropped this if they win the series, slow down buddy

I'm a Kings fan living in Vegas. Prior to the Golden Knights arrival, I got Kings games and Ducks games as part of my cable package. Because they were both taken off and replaced with VGK games, I wanted to hate the Golden Knights. But they responded to the mass shooting in Las Vegas on the eve of their first ever home game with dignity, strength, and compassion, which helped heal the city. Then they played unexpectedly well in their 1st season, and I found myself rooting for them. I still root for them.....except when they play the Kings.

I love them. The biggest misconception about Las Vegas is, we’re the desert, what do we know about hockey??? This town is FILLED with people who work & live HERE, that are transplanted from somewhere else. I’ve been here 35 years & couldn’t be happier to have a LOCAL NHL team. So, we’ve got a LOT of people that know & love hockey. There’s an EQUAL enthusiasm for “newbies” to the game that are eager to learn. Most of the license plates here are LVGK or Raiders. This team IS special bcuz they’re “home grown”!!! They brought a city together after the mass shooting on 1 October. They MADE Las Vegas band as one, just 10 days later & took us to the “promised land” of a Final in our first year. This season is different. The player’s seem more focused. They’ve spent the entire season with most of the team on LTIR. 5 goalies this season & yet here we are. The Knight’s do lots for the community. Yes, I know every team in every sport does that, but these guy’s are humble. There’s nothing spectacular about them, but they work well together. There’ll never be a game that a fan ISN’T nervous when there’s less than a minute in a period!!!! EVER!!! I hope they DO win the Cup this year. If so, it’s a TEAM effort. I include everyone that was pulled from the Silver Knight’s to help us get to where we are today. THEY have made this a possibility for how hard they played in the regular season.

This is the exact reason I was immediately drawn to the VGK when they started. Because it was right after San Diego told Spanos to shove it billing tax payers with a billion dollar stadium or he'd move the Chargers to LA. Basically extorting the city for tax payers they don't even watch football with the bill. Then here's Vegas starting from scratch on Bill's own dime. This was an easy team to love.

I've met Mr. Foley and was even invited to his own personal suite for a game (it's called "The Bunker"). I also have a family member who works for a company that he owns and he provides friends/family with free lower level tickets--he's a complete class act!

❤❤❤❤❤

Vgk and Arsenal fan but I might have to start supporting Bournemouth too lol Go knights go!!

Preach! ✨⚔️🇺🇸

Also helps that the drafting rules for expansion drafts were changed that year. It's really good for new teams, even Seattle looked good this year.

They only have four players left from the expansion draft left. Give credit to management for not resting and continuing to improve the team

@Kurtis Schwartz sort of, but it also took great vision by their coaching and management. Back in 2017 people thought they would suck even AFTER they saw what players they’d chosen. I’d also guess to some degree other teams are held back by decisions that aren’t that bad in isolation but when viewed together are bad. For example, Toronto’s core 4. Any one of those contracts isn’t too bad on its own, but all of them together screw the team and keep them from getting any depth. These 2 new teams haven’t had enough time to accumulate incompatible decisions like that yet.

​@salvadorrosales6255 6 but yes

@@salvadorrosales6255 Oh sure but it's thanks to the new expansion draft rules that they even had the pieces to trade in the first place. Credit where credit is due tho, they traded their pieces for others that have fit the team mold well. They have also made some moves that were head scratchers (hello Flurry).

Mostly? Top playoff winning pct all-time nhl isnt too shabby is it

You said it brother!

You're right, that is also exactly how I remember that team, speed & passing.

Lol what? If I’m not cheering for my home team I would much rather cheer for a team and city that really deserves a cup such as Buffalo, Winnipeg, Columbus etc. it’s not fun cheering for a team that the league wants to win.

I... would not go quite that far. For all he might have done with one bad play in 2021, he was still a solid goalie at the time. What the move came down to was finances. They could not keep putting $12M of their cap into goaltenders, which then necessitated either Fleury or Lehner getting moved out. Lehner was immovable under the flat cap, nobody wanted a contract with four years left on it, so it had to be Fleury (who had just 1 year left). A side note that needs to be addressed as well is Allan Walsh (Fleury's agent). Walsh became infamous/famous within the fanbase in 2020 for his posting of the "sword in the back" meme, portraying Fleury as having a sword (captioned "DeBoer") sticking deep into his back. A year later, all signs are that this relationship only continued to deteriorate. This likely contributed to why Fleury found out about his trade on Twitter - a fact that Walsh quickly publicized and highlighted via social media - and why neither of them heard from the team directly. You may or may not choose to believe George McPhee's (VGK's President of Hockey Ops) explanation regarding this. Either option is reasonable. McPhee stated that the radio silence was due to Walsh trying to sabotage potential trades of Fleury. Walsh was apparently - per McPhee - hearing about trade partners, reaching out to them, and saying that Fleury would retire if traded (thus reducing Fleury's trade value). This led the Knights to freeze communications and thus why Fleury heard nothing about the eventual trade to the Hawks. This may or may not be true, but events more known to the public certainly make it seem plausible. Side note: this may have influenced the shipping off of Pacioretty, who also has Walsh as an agent, though that was likely primarily motivated by cap space. Is McPhee telling the truth? Nobody on the outside can really be certain one way or another. But the idea that relations between Walsh and the VGK were bad in 2020 seems certain. And the idea that they only got worse as: Lehner was extended, the two goalies traded starts, and trade talks with Fleury ultimately picked up steam... yeah, that seems pretty certain as well, regardless of if you believe McPhee or not.

@@Utred2012 Great post; you know your stuff. I am big fan of George McPhee, as he endorsed my first book in 2020 commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Hobey Baker Award, which is given annually to NCAA hockey's best player. McPhee won that award as a forward at Bowling Green State University in 1982.

Nobody laughing now...

They were cup contending year 1

When the Oilers entered the league in 1979 they said they and Wayne Gretzky would win the cup in 5 years and they did in their 5th season 1983-84 so its not unprecidented to state your goals as an expansion team.Its happened before.

@@craigusselman546 In 1979 there were 21 teams, no salary cap, and at least 5 teams with non NHL quality rosters, hardly the same challenge.

@Spectrum ... Great post....and if I may add, the Wild traded Alex Tuch to Vegas in exchange for Vegas selecting Erik Haula and a conditional third-round pick in the 2017 or 2018 NHL Entry Draft. While Tuch and Haula are no longer with the VGK, Tuch was the principal figure in the trade that brought Jack Eichel here, and Haula was dealt for Nicolas Roy.

seattle is pretty good still. They are in it for the long haul, Vegas went all in for short term. 2 different strategies and we won't know which was was better for another 5 years.

Even with that it came down to making some good choices, not obvious ones. They saw something with Karlsson.

And yet, everyone picked them to finish last after the draft. Then when they won the division and marched to the Final, all of a sudden everyone acted like they weren't surprised that Vegas made the Final.

no salary cap in the playoffs. Shitcago did it first, quit whining

They haven't iced a team over the cap in the playoffs. Every single game has been under the cap.

@@frederickglass1583 I am not whining, just making a joke based on a fact. chill bro

@@_-frosty-_ It is just the grey area in the cap world rn. Teams see chance to do it, they will hang someone players on the LTIR even they are not incapable to play, so they can acquire more players for playoff

Eh, they spent over half of that (5mil) on a goalie they didn't even need in hindsight

As a Sabres fan, I’m rooting for y’all in the final bc if you win it’ll piss off all the annoying Oilers fans. Ty for Tuch and Krebs, and I’m glad it seems like Eichel is thriving there (honestly our management totally mistreated him, especially with the whole surgery situation).

​@@uranium54321 I love seeing Sabres fans not always dump on eichel. The trade is looking good for both teams and I'm glad that Tuch gets to play for his hometown team

The Pens gave Vegas a 2nd round pick to take Flower.

What are you talking about? Pittsburgh gave Vegas a 2nd round pick to ensure they would take Fleury. Pittsburgh had to get rid of one of their two goalies for salary cap reasons. They couldn't afford both. So to make sure this happened they made a deal with the Knights and included a 2nd round pick with Fleury because the Penguins chose Matt Murray and they didn't want the Knights to not take a goalie with their pick.

@@Yimvision damn really?? I was a bit younger when fleury got taken and not that into the sport. With how the organization and fans talk about him, that seems crazy

The NHL didn’t want a garbage expansion team. They wanted a competitive one.

Except no business people smart enough to have the amount of money required to buy an NHL franchise would ever do it if they were going to be walking into a dog shit team that was so bad and probably in a non-traditional hockey market that it would never gain a big enough following and turned into the next Arizona Coyotes (Vegas had to pay $500M to join, Seattle was $650M and the next one's estimated to go up by at least that $150M). The hard salary cap also means someone with infinite pockets can't just walk in and buy their way to the top overnight like what's happening with MLB or soccer.

yea. This is the NHL so a team entering that league should comprise of NHL ready players. Are you seriously upset that they didn't play in the NHL with college level talent?

Yup, and its fucking glorious to see them eat crow 24/7

True...but if im florida i am researching golf tee times right about now

Yes I understand. Lol.

The Sabres are getting there, the Canucks?....that city is getting what it deserves.

Keep making excuses. You sound really good at it. Maybe next year the Calgary Flames will be "entertaining" enough to make the playoffs.

@Yimvision the flames are terrible. Enjoy the show tho, sounds like you're more into the fake sword fights before the game than the actually sport.

The knights got eliminated in first round 2019 because of one of the worst blown call ever made in the history of nhl. So much for vegas being bettmans favorite team.

How big was the Leafs salary in the playoffs again?......

There is some truth to what you are saying, but experts and fans alike proclaimed the team would be garbage front the start, which fueled the misfits narrative.

@@kftc1980 the more I listen to "experts" the more I realise they don't know more than we do

@@borrow4654 yeah, I wouldn’t recommend listening to them.

@@kftc1980 I can agree with that lmao. Some of it has value but id take it with a grain of salt

Management was smart they made deals with teams to take the players they didn’t want and got more compensation in draft picks and they used that capital to make trades which have worked out.

Maybe do a little research into this...Poaching means illegal, which rules were broken?....Maybe admit they were better coached, had a much better GM, a better owner, and a much better environment to play in than most other NHL cities.

N 7, Man cut it out! You're only saying that now because they are winning. At the time nobody gave them a shot. They don't have any top tier talent on their team like that up until Eichel.

Who was a top tier player when Vegas selected them? The only star, was Fleury, who was on the back side of his career. The only other player that had any previous success, was Marchy, who was coming off a 30 goal season. But, Florida didn't want him, and even threw in Riley Smith just so Vegas would take him.

$500M. A massive handoff. 😂

Those teams also didn't give the other owners $500 million just to get in. When you pay 500 million, you should expect to be competitive right away.

@@timmccoy6685 helping save the league from being dragged to its death.

Amazing that people dont remember how bad San Jose, Ottawa and Columbus were...now all of a sudden expansion teams are going to the finals their first year. Be nice if Buffalo and Vancouver would have their asses kissed like that.

But you would you have preferred them to have a shitty team and no attendance? Isn’t it good for hockey overall when we can blow up the sport in a city like Vegas?

@@joshuagohres7902 it’s a good thing to have new teams good. They did places like Atlanta dirty by having them always be shitty.

If that's the direction we're going to go, let's also add in the fact EVERY SINGLE ANALYST AND SPORTS PERSONA had VGK finishing dead last in 2017.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Everyone thought they were going to be bad. They took advantage of other teams mishandling assets. They're just a well ran franchise. Why sm cope?

Except those same idiots were saying they'd be a shit team when the roster was revealed; it wasn't until they were good that all of a sudden the narrative changed and they'd been given too much help.

Hardly , Boomers understand business, children do not. Boomers had it rough, and learned, kids today whine about everything, nothing is their fault.

Cry more.

Cry 🤡

You clearly didn't watch Florida against Toronto because Bennett and Gudas should've missed at least 3 games between the 2 of them and got a whopping 1 minor penalty for their crimes. Parros should've been immediately fired for not disciplining Bennett for what he did to Knies which was far worse than what Pietrangelo did.

Cry 😢

Are you dumb ? Vegas sells out every game they have 😂 and the cheapest seats for stably cup iré like 500 apiece