Vegas Golden Knights: Three Key Components To Building A Playoff Team
Vegas Golden Knights General Manager George McPhee has lots of work to do building a playoff contender.
As an expansion franchise, the Vegas Golden Knights have to start from square one. The expansion draft process will be long and difficult but in the end, you’ll be able to have players on the roster and an outlook on the future. We all know by the time Vegas makes the playoffs, more than half the players on the inaugural roster will be on another team by then.
That has to do with George McPhee building through the entry draft and gaining prospects. That’s absolutely the right process the Golden Knights have to do right out of the shoot. Establish your prospect pool and see which players belongs on your NHL team.
Building a playoff team is not easy. In fact, McPhee will be at a huge disadvantage especially after Owner Bill Foley laid the groundwork for the team to make the playoffs in its 3rd year of existence. It’ll be an awfully tough task for McPhee to accomplish but it’s not impossible.
Here are three key components to building a playoff contender within the teams first three years in existence:
Hiring The Right Coach
McPhee actually may have nailed this one already. The jury is still out on a Head Coach like Gerard Gallant but he definitely deserves another chance after the raw deal Florida gave him. Gallant is a players coach and the team should warm up to him pretty quickly right out of the gate.
People need to be reminded he took a team that was predicted to finish second to last in the Atlantic division and turned it into an Atlantic division title in 2015-2016. While falling short in the first round against the Islanders, his team was leaps and bounds better from the previous season.
I think with Gallant at the helm for the Golden Knights, he’ll be able to lead this team as long as McPhee gives him the right pieces. The Panthers gave Gallant a bunch of young talent with some grizzled vets and Gallants team flourished. If that’s what McPhee has to build in order to become a playoff team then so be it.
Acquiring Two Top Line Centerman
This is a big one. Now I’m not saying that McPhee has to do this one right away, but he’ll need to at some point. McPhee can acquire these players via the draft, trade or free agency.
The reason why I’m putting so much emphasis on this component is because you have to take a look at other teams around the league. Here are a few examples:
Anaheim: Ryan Getzlaf and Ryan Kesler
Boston: Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci
Chicago: Artem Anismov and Jonathan Toews
Edmonton: Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl
Pittsburgh: Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin
San Jose: Logan Couture and Joe Thornton
What do all seven of those teams have in common? They’re all playoff teams and they’re all great to elite level players. To have that kind of Center depth on a roster is crucial down the stretch and leading into the playoffs. This is an absolute necessity for McPhee and the Vegas Golden Knights.
Acquiring A Number One Defenseman
Some people will be surprised the goaltender isn’t one of my key components of building a playoff team. If I said putting a Stanley Cup Champion together, then the goaltending position would take the number one spot.
However, if you don’t have a number one defenseman in today’s NHL you might as well just give up already. A team will never survive a stretch of 82 games if they don’t have a top pairing defenseman. At some point, McPhee will have to draft or overpay for a top blue liner during his tenure as GM of the Knights.
Lets take a look at some of the number one defensemen around the league:
Anaheim: Cam Fowler
Boston: Zdeno Chara
Calgary: Marc Giordano
Chicago: Duncan Keith
Minnesota: Ryan Suter
Montreal: Shea Weber
Nashville: Roman Josi
New York Rangers: Ryan McDonagh
Ottawa: Erik Karlsson
Pittsburgh: Kris Letang (Injured, done for the season)
San Jose: Brent Burns
St. Louis: Alex Pietrangelo
Washington: John Carlson
I think you guys know where I’m going with this but in case you don’t, 13 of the 16 playoff teams have a top of the line stud on the blue line. Look at those names on that list. If those types of players aren’t on Vegas in three years time then McPhee’s time might be up.
Next: Five Players To Avoid At The Expansion Draft.
Of course there’s a lot of time to fill between this time and three years from now. But the Vegas Golden Knights General Manager has a ton of tough decisions to make. Those moves will impact the team’s future and his job moving forward. But this isn’t an impossible deed. If McPhee can build the Washington Capitals into a wagon then he could build the Vegas Golden Knights into a strong force.