Six lessons Seattle franchise can learn from the Vegas Golden Knights
2. Appoint an experienced Head Coach
Bringing in the right Head Coach will be one of the most important early decisions Ron Francis will make as General Manager of the Seattle Franchise. As Vegas learned during their process, it is a world away from hiring a Head Coach for an already established organization.
There will be a slew of different criteria to consider when going through the interview process, not least that whoever does get the gig will have to bring together a group of players all with different personalities in a new city, develop chemistry in the locker room and then mesh those collection of strangers together into line combinations on the ice.
That was the mammoth undertaking facing Gerard Gallant square in the face when he was announced as the Golden Knights’ first Head Coach in franchise history on April, 13, 2017. Boasting previous coaching experience with the Montreal Canadiens under Michel Therrien before becoming the Head Coach of the Florida Panthers, Gallant maybe wasn’t the sexy option but he’s proved to be just what Vegas needed.
He was given a roster full of players from different backgrounds, all with wide-ranging stories and experiences in the NHL. Many of the players taken by the Golden Knights in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft were seemingly heading for the hockey scrapheap, with the vast majority arriving in Sin City with a rather large chip on their shoulders.
Although Gallant did have the luxury of being given an elite netminder in Marc-Andre Fleury and a proven sniper in James Neal who, at that point, had achieved six straight seasons of scoring 30+ points, the rest of the players at his disposal were made up of unknown quantities, young studs who hadn’t yet taken the NHL by storm and grizzled veterans looking for one last shot at staying in the big leagues.
Gallant, with his cool, quiet demeanour, brought his players together from day one and meshed a wide variety of personalities and on-ice attributes together, creating a perfect storm of ingredients that would lead to unprecedented success on the ice.
He tapped into the potential of players like William Karlsson who had only tallied 50 points in his first four seasons in the NHL, a total that he smashed during his first year with the Golden Knights. And that kind of remarkable transformation could be found up and down the lineup.
Reilly Smith and Jonathan Marchessault, who have combined with Karlsson for a staggering 381 points during their first two years together in Vegas, were also woken from their respective slumbers by Gallant and the trio have formed one of the most potent top lines in the NHL.
Gallant is a players’ coach and he’s all about the team, he doesn’t crave attention for himself when speaking to the media and he knows how to get the best out of every single player on his roster, no matter what stage of their careers they are at. Look at Cody Eakin and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare; Gallant squeezed every ounce of talent they had left and helped them to become key pieces of the Vegas team that made a run to the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural year.
Vegas are in safe and good hands with Gallant at the helm and the winner of the Jack Adams Award in 2017-18 knows how to get the best out of his team on a night-to-night basis, as perfectly demonstrated by his results with the Golden Knights so far, who struck gold with their first Head Coach appointment.
Seattle now need to do the same and GM Ron Francis will have to dig deep into his contacts to make sure he gets right what will be one of the most critical and significant decisions in this new franchise’s early history.