It would be a reasonable question for at least 20 NHL owners to ask of their general managers.
“How can a team that had one player under contract seven months ago be so much better than we are?”
The only answer a flustered GM might have offered in response until now has been, “Just wait. It’s early.”
Except it’s not early any more. Here we are almost at Christmas and the Vegas Golden Knights are fourth in the NHL standings — not fourth from last, fourth overall — with a big game against league-leading Tampa Bay on Tuesday night.
This is no longer a fluke, or the peculiar result of unusual circumstances. With 40 per cent of the season gone, the Golden Knights have lost only nine games in regulation and are riding a 6-0-1 streak since Dec. 1.
This is not a team that looks like it’s fading. The Knights appear to be getting stronger.
It’s a hockey club reminiscent, quite frankly, of the scrappy, upstart Florida Panthers squad that charged all the way to the 1996 Stanley Cup final.
Except that wasn’t a first-year team. Those Panthers were in their third season, and had early draft picks like Ed Jovanovski, Rob Niedermayer, Radek Dvorak and Rhett Warrener in their lineup and contributing during that stunning springtime run.
The Knights, on the other hand, played their first game in early October and have none of their draft picks from last June, including No. 1 selection Cody Glass (sixth overall), in the lineup.
Yet here they are. First in the Pacific Division as of Sunday. Shocking, really, and count this writer among those who forecast the Knights would be in range of the first pick next June by now.
The way it’s looking, the only way they’ll get a shot at Rasmus Dahlin will be to trade for the pick. They can play .500 hockey the rest of the way (they’ve played at a .688 clip so far) and probably still make post-season play.
They wouldn’t be the first NHL expansion team to make the playoffs in their first year, as in 1967 the NHL bizarrely put all six first-year clubs in one expansion-only division, allowing St. Louis, Minnesota, Los Angeles and Philadelphia to make the playoffs. Hartford and Edmonton, meanwhile, made the playoffs right away after joining the NHL with Winnipeg and Quebec City in the 1979 merger deal with the World Hockey Association.
The Knights, however, can certainly lay claim to being the best first-year NHL outfit to take to the ice. This is actually what was promised by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman when Vegas got a team, but nobody took it too seriously.
Well, we are now.
It’s not as if it has been an uneventful ride, either. Injuries have forced Vegas to use five goalies so far, and all five have a win. There was the terrible mass shooting that traumatized the city, and there have been minor bumps, like the club’s official Twitter feed getting in a spat with the Nashville media.
But this club has done some things very, very well, notably making the T-Mobile Arena a very difficult place to play. The Knights have played 16 times at home, and only three times has the enemy come away with a victory. Not surprisingly, the crowds have been coming, with the Knights smack dab in the middle of NHL attendance so far.
So what is driving this amazing season?
- A shockingly good offence. Most expansion teams, quite understandably, struggle to score goals. Not the Golden Knights. As of Monday they were the third-highest-scoring team in the NHL with 3.44 goals per game, and fifth in five-on-five goals. When you consider the Buffalo Sabres with Jack Eichel, Ryan O’Reilly, Sam Reinhart and Evander Kane are 31st with more than a goal less per game, and the Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins are scoring a half-goal less per game, these are remarkable numbers.
- An egalitarian payroll. Goalie Marc-Andre Fleury is the highest paid player on the team at $5.75 million per season; if he were still on the Penguins, he’d be the fifth highest paid. The Knights’ highest-paid skater is James Neal, who is tied for the 148th-highest cap hit in the league. The Knights have 18 players making $1 million or more, while the Chicago Blackhawks have only 11. Vegas has less wage disparity among its players than most teams in the NHL.
- Gerard Gallant is just a good coach. Of course, we knew that. Instead of being bitter about being dumped so ignominiously by Florida — remember the media photos of Gallant waiting to catch a cab from the rink? — the Prince Edward Islander has brought his usual upbeat attitude to Las Vegas. Statistically, Gallant has produced a team that, as mentioned, can score goals, and is mostly middle of the pack in other important categories and not horrible at anything. It’s a well-coached squad.
- General manager George McPhee got some steals in the expansion draft. Erik Haula, William Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault, Nate Schmidt and Colin Miller, in particular, were players that their former teams might have erred on in making them available. The fact that all are 26 years of age or younger is what sets the Knights apart from previous expansion clubs.
- The Vegas nightlife factor. OK, we’re just guessing here, but is it possible the novelty of visiting Sin City is leaving opposing teams a little discombobulated? Millionaire athletes can find distractions in all NHL cities, but Las Vegas does provide a collection of potential activities far beyond what most recent expansion towns — St. Paul, Nashville, Columbus — can provide.
Sure it’s a stretch. But everything this team does is a stretch.
If the Knights continue down this path, they won’t have a high draft pick, as mentioned. But the assets they do own are increasing in value, which will give McPhee more cards to play as he seeks to build his franchise.
Right now, they look about two years ahead of schedule.
Damien Cox’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday