We are living in a world where an expansion team is playing for a title in their first season. This is not a joke. They didn't pilfer the best players. They didn't sign some high priced free agents. They are flukes in the biggest way, a 500-1 long-shot.
Of course, that same team got 108 points, were wire-to-wire one of teh best teams in the league, had a +44 goal differential, the best home record in the NHL. They were squarely slightly above average across a host of "fancy stats." When you get a 109 point team steamrolling its way to a Conference Title against two lesser teams and another team just four points better, its surprising to see that level of dominance, but not exactly a fluke.
Squaring these two versions of the Golden Knights incredible season is one of the tougher tasks in sports. The Knights shouldn't be hear, but when we actually look at the rosters, stripped of the idea that other teams gave up on them, they aren't all too bad. They have a bunch of 2nd and 3rd liners, second and third pairing defensemen, and a goalie who can play as well as any when healthy. They may not have the roster of a Stanley Cup Champion, but if you took this exact roster, put them on Carolina before the season, no one would have been surprised if they snuck into the playoffs.
But this isn't that. They are an expansion team, and generally expansion teams have been disasters over the years, some of teh worst teams in teh history of the sport. For some reason, despite the expansion draft rules being more liberal than usual, people expected that. Here's my main test for why I actually think you could dhave predicted the Knights to be decent (key word: decent, not great) before the season: most hardcore NHL fans had probably heard of most of their players before teh season started. That just wasn;t true of previous expansion teams.
Whether you think the rise of the Knights is deserved or not, we have to admit it is a great story that is great for hockey. They have shown hockey can work in Vegas, pro sports can work. They have a real fanbase, not an arena full of traveling fans and gamblers getting comped tickets. From the start of the season, they had a special home atmosphere, great crowds, as loud as any. This has only ramped up in the playoffs, with amazingly, intricate pregame plays, little Medieval Times skits on ice, that somehow work perfectly in Vegas. The NHL got a nice first mover advantage coming into Vegas, and have hit a home run,
From teh time they dominated the LA Kings, sweeping them limiting the Kings to three goals in teh four games, we should have seen this as possible. It is surprising how easily they turned aside the Jets, but again not so expected if we take the Knights as the team they were, not the team many, if not all, thought they would be.
The Knights may win a Cup in their inaugaral season. Yes, it is true their fans don't "deserve" it in teh sense of not having suffered, not having faced the pains and misery of, say, the Capitals fans, or even the Jets fans, who have lived through seeing a team stripped away from them. But really, who cares? There is no "deserved" in sports. Sure, it is nice when long suffering fans get their due, but you can also say in a sport that has seen quite a few franchises struggle, at times putting the viability of the league at risk or at least under question, it may be good to have their newest fanbase get invested early.
There are so many incredible aspects to the rise of the Knights, from the silly trades that created this team, most notably the Panthers giving up two members of their top line. The Knights also gave us the rebirth of Marc Andre Fleury, of coach Garrard Gallant who was literally kicked off the team bus in Florida when being fired. It also is a great way to snipe back at the numerous media members that derided the fact Vegas was getting a team in the first place. So much criticism was levied on the NHL, and they've proven everyone wrong.
True great sport Cinderella stories are so rare. We had one even greater two years ago when Leicester City won the Premier League. But this might be the most incredible story in US major sports, at least in my lifetime, but again, when you strip away the noise coming into the start of the year, the Knights have proven themselves over and over again this year.
And to that end, I say we stop worrying what this says about the NHL, about if the expansion draft was rigged to create a monster (it wasn't), if anyone could have predicted this (again, predicting they would be a bubble team would not have been farfetched). Let's just bask in how great hockey has been in Vegas, that we get at least two more drawn out pre-game plays. We'll worry if this is sustanable later, or if the future Seattle team can replicate this success, but for now, just enjoy it; enjoy watching a team of cast-offs, a team of "C" to "B" players make work in the world's best playoff tournament.
