It is hard to believe that we are in August already and we are just one month away from training camp getting underway for the Vegas Golden Knights.
After a busy offseason that saw a flurry of moves and a constant battle to get in line with the $81.5 million salary cap for next year, the Vegas Golden Knights have their roster set for 2019-20 and now it will be a case of working out line combinations and awarding final roster spots to deserving parties during training camp in September.
One high-end rookie will have the chance to win a role on the blueline on the opening night roster, while the likes of Brandon Pirri, Tomas Nosek and Cody Glass will slug it out for the right to line up on the left wing on the third-line alongside Cody Eakin and Alex Tuch.
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But, those final roster decisions aside, there is no doubt that expectations are high for this team and they are clearly in win-now mode heading into 2019-20. After consecutive seasons of reaching the playoffs, including making a stunning run to the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural year, the Golden Knights are almost expected to win now and that won’t change this year.
President of Hockey Operations George McPhee said as much during a Conference Call in the wake of trading Russian stud Nikita Gusev to the New Jersey Devils last week. McPhee believes in this team as it is currently constituted and didn’t want to harm locker room chemistry by sacrificing two or three glue players for the sake of one offensive weapon. He told nhl.com/goldenknights that he believes this roster is as good as it has ever been.
"“Well, we’re a better team because we had depth in the positions where we moved players from. We are a team that, I believe, is a contender. It’s a very good team. We’ve been very aggressive in signing our players to deals that make sense for the team now and certainly in the future. As you know, we weren’t going to take our time with this team. We were going to be aggressive to make it a better team and we have. We believe we’re just as good or better than we’ve been. It’s a very good hockey team and we’re in a good place now. We are a better team.”"
It seems strange to say it but the pressure is firmly on this Golden Knights team heading into 2019-20. McPhee is right, they are a very good team and whether they are a better roster without Nikita Gusev, Colin Miller and Erik Haula, only time will tell, particularly with Gusev and how he fares for the Devils.
However, the Knights still boast one of the best rosters in the NHL and Miller and Haula can be replaced by the glut of high-end talent that is currently thriving in the minors, in particular Cody Glass, Nic Hague, Jimmy Schuldt and Zach Whitecloud who all look ready to make the leap to the NHL sooner rather than later.
For starters, they have a future Hall of Fame goalie in Marc-Andre Fleury who, as proven during his first two years in Sin City, can still play at the peak of his powers and is capable of being an absolute game-changer when the chips are really down. Malcolm Subban is a more than capable backup while Garret Sparks now provides added competition on the depth chart, although both have wrinkles in their game that need ironing out.
The blueline is built on the collective rather than the individual for Vegas, although Shea Theodore is fast morphing into a bona fide star after achieving career-highs in games (79), goals (12), assists (25) and points (37) last year. Nate Schmidt is also a valuable piece of the defense, as proven in 2018-19 when his 20-game suspension at the beginning of the year contributed to a slow start for the Knights. Both Brayden McNabb and Jon Merrill have improved significantly as players over the last two-years, while Deryk Engelland and one of Nic Hague, Jake Bischoff, Zach Whitecloud, Jimmy Schuldt and Dylan Coghlan will make up the bottom-pairing.
Vegas’ biggest strength without doubt, however, is their prowess in the offensive zone and the fact that they’ve got enough firepower in the top six alone to sink a small fleet of battleships. The top two lines of Reilly Smith, William Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault and Max Pacioretty, Paul Stastny and Mark Stone gives the Golden Knights a formidable top-six unit that any team in the NHL would be envious of.
The Knights have struggled to generate a boatload of secondary scoring at times throughout the course of the last two-years, although that should change in 2019-20. For starters, they will have a 50 point scorer in Alex Tuch on the third line who should only get better and continue to produce at a high rate. Cody Eakin is a reliable two-way forward who excels in the faceoff circle and on the penalty kill, but he also carved out career-highs in goals (22) and points (41) last year.
Throw into the mixing pot the fact that Brandon Pirri will get an opportunity to crack the third-line and finally translate his scoring prowess in the AHL to the NHL on a consistent basis, coupled with the scoring abilities of Tomas Nosek and Ryan Reaves on the fourth-line, then you have all the ingredients for an explosive lineup that can beat up on the opposition at will if everyone plays to their maximum.
It is interesting that the Golden Knights ranked 13th in Goals For last year with 246, a tally they are capable of easily surpassing this year should they get secondary scoring along with high offensive output from the likes of Karlsson, Stone, Pacioretty, Smith and Marchessault.
You wouldn’t normally place such high expectations on an expansion team getting ready for their third-year in the NHL but, so lofty are the standards set by themselves as a franchise, the Vegas Golden Knights are not in the business of making up the numbers and their mantra from day one has been to compete and win.
That is why a plethora of their key pieces are locked down for the foreseeable. The likes of Fleury, Karlsson, Stone, Theodore, Schmidt, Marchessault, Pacioretty and Stastny are all under control for the next few years and the Golden Knights intend on milking the maximum ounce of potential they can out of that window by being contender year after year.
After making a magical run to the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural year, suffering a First Round exit in 2018-19 was a bitter disappointment and one they will want to avoid at all costs. Despite being a new team in a new market, Las Vegas is hungry for success and the Golden Knights are in the best possible situation to satisfy those cravings.
With a loaded roster, depth up and down the lineup and a treasure chest of draft picks they can use to both flood the farm system with an influx of fresh talent as well as having capital to go out and make one or two trades to improve the team immediately, the Vegas Golden Knights are set up to contend for multiple championships over the course of the next few years. And their immediate goal is to win in 2019-20 in order to accomplish their goal of becoming the fastest-ever expansion team in all the major sports to win a championship.