Vegas Golden Knights a Cinderella Story – NOT

Vegas Golden Knights are a true Cinderella story.   I keep hearing terms like cast offs and how they were just players that were no longer wanted by their former teams.   Every time I hear a talking head say that I throw up in my mouth a little bit.

There has been two other instances in pro sports of an expansion team.  The first one was the St Louis Blues.  The Blues and 5 other teams were added to the league in 1967.  In order to try and keep things on an even setting the NHL put all of the expansion teams in the same division.  So if it had not b been the Blues on of the other teams would have been an expansion team that made it to the championship game.  The other team was the Chicago Fire in the MLS.  Which not only made the championship game but won the championship.

So yes the Golden Knights have already joined a select group and would join an even smaller group if the win the Stanley Cup.   Saying that they came out of no where to do this would not be correct though.

Expansion Draft for Success

To understand how this has happened there are a few thing that we will need to take a look at.   The NHL had decided that getting a $500 Million initiation fee should count for something.  They also did not want a repeat of when the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild.   The expansion fee for those teams was not nearly as high as it was for the Knights.     Neither of those teams were given the same advantages as the Knights in their expansion draft.  The first thing going against them is that there were two teams coming into the league at the same time so the pool of players was already doing to be diluted.   The second thing is that the teams were allowed to protect more players.

What was left  were aging players and players that were at best roll players and not putting the possibility of any top flight players in the draft.  Which is fine since expansion teams are not really expected to compete in their first few years.  This was the old way of doing an expansion draft.   So what did the NHL do with the Knights?  They significantly changed the rules for the draft so that the Golden Knights would have a chance to compete.

There was only one

The NHL  only added one team even though they have been looking to add two more teams.  They made the protection rules for the current teams quite restrictive.  I will not go into complete detail and if you want to read the full extent of what the NHL did you can read it here.   At most teams were allowed to protect 11 players.  A combination of forwards, defense and one goalie.  This would mean that at least half of their current roster would have to be left un protected.

Since the pool of players to pick from was larger and more talented it put the Golden Knights into a very unique situation for an expansion team.  I am not saying that this is the only reason for their success.  They still had to pick the right players and staff.  Then the staff had to figure out which of those players they were going to keep and how to use the talent that they had gained through the expansion draft.   The piont is that they were put in a situation that could foster success rather than just trying to field a team and make it through a season.

It will be interesting to see how this affects the team long term.  They are set up for immediate success.  This will mean that over the next few years they will be drafting later in the draft.   How will this affect the future team.  Of course if they win a Stanley Cup in their first few years they may not care.