Thoughts on the Vegas Golden Knights?

[Uncle Scrooge]

Took everyone's "trash" and is like #1 in injured man games lost all the while almost leading the league. To me this can literally only mean 1 of 3 things. Either it's all rigged, none of these teams are trying in the regular season, or coaching is far more important than most of us thought and most of the coaches are garbage. None are really good options or looks for the NHL.

They didn’t get much trash though..

I don’t see a single bad player in their lineup. Worst players are young guys who coming into the year were top players in the AHL or NHL veterans who not too long ago had good years under their belts.

The rest are proven impact players who their teams didn’t want to give up but had to/were acquired in sidedeals.

And then there’s Wild Bill who is a story of his own.

But i mean lets not kid ourselves. What if Karlsson was still a bottom 6 center and Florida exposed a guy like Petrovic instead of giving up JAM and Smith - effectively taking away the Vegas top line - how good would this team be ? Im going to say they wouldn’t be in the playoffs. Tuch - Eakin - Carpenter would be their 2nd line...

We can talk about the depth etc etc but at the end of the day what’s been giving the team that xtra punch is their legit top line - line Vegas wasnt supposed to have.

What im saying is they’ve been fortunate. Cant see it happening again with Seattle, they’ll probably be the Vegas team we all thought they were supposed to be. I have a hard time believing Seattle will hit another homerun with 1) centers 2) scorers.

I would say none of the things you said are true. In my opinion the biggest factor of all is work. Confidence + insane work ethic all year long, that’s a deadly combination. It makes coaches look better when the players are buying in and executing the gameplan every night. It makes indiviuals look better when they come to play every night.

Teams lack consistency in the regular season from work standpoint. It’ll happen to Vegas too. I think that’s what people don’t realize. There are so many nights over the course of a year where you just don’t have it, either failed preparation, b2b, overconfidence, whaever it is.

When the team is not allowing them to use any excuses they do better than others. We saw the Blues start the year with the same mindset and look dominant, but then they had enough winning and got complacent. Vegas was never satisfied, until maybe the last month or so there’s been some minor stretches of that.

Of course work can only do so much, you still need to have talent, but if you have a competitive team working harder than others will give you an advantage.

 

[IceNeophyte]

This was hands down my favorite thread of all time, AINEC.

to the person that ressurected the thread, you are off-base calling people stupid for their predictions. NHL pundits, who get paid very good money for their informed opinions, didn't expect VGK to come out of the gates like they did. I didn't expect it, and I can't imagine you expected.

I liked the snark and edge of the Twitter account, but alas, he got offensive one too many times And got fired (My guess, not something I know except that he is gone). The Twitter is now like a bowl of unsweetened oatmeal.

 

[Legionnaire]

"I'm not looking for the best players, Craig. I'm looking for the right ones." - Herb Brooks. That is Vegas in a nutshell. They play as a team and are all on the same page.

 

[IceNeophyte]

Have you seen them play lately? They went on a ridiculous run which defied all logic. This was no different than cbj hitting a 14 game winning streak last year . We all saw how that played out in the end

Vegas will sadly suffer the same fate. Regression to the mean...

Points in 6 of last 7 games. Without arguably their best forward (a critical piece of the best +/- line in the NHL) and more recently their best puck possession guy. If they don't get Smith, Sbisa, Perron back, it could very well spell doom for them. If they do, don't count them out.

 

[Legionnaire]

Points in 6 of last 7 games. Without arguably their best forward (a critical piece of the best +/- line in the NHL) and more recently their best puck possession guy. If they don't get Smith, Sbisa, Perron back, it could very well spell doom for them. If they do, don't count them out.

Horrible. Time to relegate the Knights already.

 

[TheGroceryStick]

This is great.
However I was worried that I said something myself.
Didn't get a notification from iceneophyte, so I am looking alright

 

[Armourboy]

This is great.
However I was worried that I said something myself.
Didn't get a notification from iceneophyte, so I am looking alright

Think I've said pretty much the same thing since it started, that I thought they would be close to the playoffs but the difference would be that after the trade deadline they would have a much harder time because other teams would be trying just as hard as they are. Granted this also assumed that they would build more for the future and a guy like Neal would be traded.

I wouldn't call anyone stupid in this thread for holding their early opinion, I mean even guys that get paid to do this stuff didnt see it coming.

Most people were going off of the past, but Vegas was in a fairly unique position compared to past expansion teams. First they were the only one, two they did get more favorable rules, and thirdly, unlike say the Preds, they were coming into a salary cap league. I know when we came in the difference in salaries some teams held were insane back then.

Good for them though, I'm more interested to see what some of these guys do next season. I do have a feeling some of them did have some serious overachieving going on.

 

[Empoleon8771]

Hindsight is 20/20. Who would have seen that literally everything would go right for the Knights? Even the most optimistic people only had them as a wildcard team.

 

[Trap Jesus]

Just LOL at people not calling a historically good season for a bunch of players thrown together that were mostly just considered random depth players. The egg on your faces right now! Y'all just a bunch of haterzzzzzzz.

 

[Bandit]

20 wins will be a miracle.

Was I right or what... Amazing season for Vegas. Will be interesting to see if they can keep it up next year or not.

 

[IceNeophyte]

This is great.
However I was worried that I said something myself.
Didn't get a notification from iceneophyte, so I am looking alright

I had so much fun with this thread last night!

 

[GMofOilers]

Some crazy good posts in here

 

[InfinityIggy]

I think they could set some unfortunate records in terms of standings.

I am excited that there is an expansion team though and it will be interesting to follow them this season.

Hahaha, you fool.

 

[GMofOilers]

Hahaha, you fool.

Hhhahaha, if I would of posted in the thread, I prob would of forecasted them being a bottom team, along with many many fans and all the media.

Just shows that fans dont know as much as they think they do.