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It’s been a Cinderella story for the Vegas Golden Knights, except even more grand. Instead of one underdog, the Golden Knights have a team full of of them, all of them with something to prove to the teams that gave up on them. Instead of one night in a fancy ball gown and magicked-up pumpkin carriage, the Golden Knights have carried their success throughout the regular season and into the playoffs, staving off the stroke of midnight with every victory.
Now the Golden Knights have made the Western Conference Finals and are just eight wins away from earning the Stanley Cup in their first year of existence. It’s easily the most successful season by an expansion team in any pro sport.
Like many Vegas shows, that’s a tough act to follow. But that’s the task for Seattle, who are aiming to join the NHL in 2020.
Vegas has shown Seattle that first-year success is possible, but they have also hurt Seattle’s chances for having that same success. If anything, Vegas has been too good, too quickly. While the Golden Knights have been a great story, there has been plenty of grumbling from the stepsisters left behind by Cinderella.
That could be bad news for Seattle, who are unlikely to start their inaugural season with a team as good as the Golden Knights.
Seattle’s Oak View Group and their prospective NHL ownership group, led by billionaire David Bonderman and filmmaker Jerry Bruckheimer, paid an estimated $650 million expansion fee to the NHL, up from Vegas’s $500 million, and will expect to be treated as well as the Golden Knights, starting with the expansion draft.
“We would anticipate that the terms of an expansion draft for a 32nd team would be the same as they were for Las Vegas,” said NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.
That means NHL teams will only be able to protect seven forwards, three defenceman, and one goaltender or one goaltender and eight skaters regardless of position. That limited protection list means good players will be available for Seattle, but this time around, NHL GMs will have more time to prepare and will likely be a lot more careful with the players they leave unprotected.
The biggest issue for Seattle is that it wasn’t the expansion draft rules that gave the Golden Knights such a strong team, but a handful of NHL GMs that misjudged their own talent. The most egregious offender was Dale Tallon with the Florida Panthers.
Tallon, looking to undo moves made by the regime that replaced him as GM the previous season, made a deal with the Golden Knights: the Knights would take Reilly Smith and his $5 million contract off his hands, and the Knights would get Jonathan Marchessault in the expansion draft. He did this to protect four defencemen in the expansion draft, limiting the Panthers to just nine protected players instead of 11.
Smith and Marchessault formed two-thirds of the Golden Knights’ dominant first line and have led the team in playoff scoring with 11 points each through 10 games.
The likelihood of Seattle getting gifted two-thirds of a top line in two years time? Slim-to-none. And that’s just one example of the type of deals GMs were willing to cut with Vegas that might not give to Seattle.
That’s not to mention the bounty of draft picks the Golden Knights extracted from the rest of the NHL, including three first round picks in 2017, that should make them a contender for years to come. The second time around, NHL GMs are likely to be much more stingy.
With Vegas as the example to follow, Seattle hockey fans will expect success right from puck-drop on the 2020-21 season. They’re likely to be disappointed.
Stick-taps and Glove-drops
A tap of the stick to the Washington Capitals for slaying their playoff dragon, the Pittsburgh Penguins. For the first time in his career, Alex Ovechkin will play in the third round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
A tap of the stick to Nathan Walker, who made his playoff debut for the Capitals in the series-clinching game six, thereby becoming the first Australian to play in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. To top it off, he tallied an assist on the opening goal.
Big Numbers
10 - It’s been ten years since a team other than the Pittsburgh Penguins, Los Angeles Kings, Chicago Blackhawks, or Boston Bruins has won the Stanley Cup. Of the four teams remaining in the playoffs, only the Tampa Bay Lightning have previously won the Cup, so the odds are good that we will see an all-new champion.
4 - At the end of the second round, the four leading scorers in the playoffs have all been eliminated: Pittsburgh’s Jake Guentzel and Sidney Crosby with 21 points, and Boston’s David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand with 20 and 17 points. The leading scorer still in the playoffs is Winnipeg’s Mark Scheifele, with 11 goals and 16 points in 12 games.
