The dust is just settling on the NHL Trade Deadline and the Vegas Golden Knights can go to work today safe in the knowledge that they are a better team now than what they were yesterday.
On a day that saw a record-breaking 32 trades go down, the Vegas Golden Knights emerged as one of the big winners.
It didn’t seem that way, though, as reported target after reported target were dealt to other teams, and there was a fear that the Knights would squander the opportunity to improve at the Deadline.
Granted, they had traded for Alec Martinez days before but that move alone wasn’t going to move the needle for this team.
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No, Vegas needed another puck-moving defenseman and they also had to address a worrying lack of secondary scoring.
What transpired, however, was so stunning that not even the shrewdest of hockey experts or the most imaginative minds could have scripted what went down.
Because, with the minutes ticking down, the Golden Knights once again pulled off the spectacular to stun the rest of the NHL.
Just a year removed from pulling the trigger on a blockbuster trade for elite two-way forward Mark Stone, the Vegas front office opted to throw all their chips in the middle of the table again.
I thought I was seeing things at first. But no, there it was in all its glory, Robin Lehner to the Vegas Golden Knights, according to NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman.
Wait, what?!
Talk about a move completely out of left field.
Of all the analysis, all the speculation pieces, all the mock trades, I don’t think anyone had the Golden Knights in the market for a goalie.
But, then again, the Vegas Golden Knights have blazed their own path since entering the NHL in 2017, and they were at it again on Monday.
Rather than pay over the odds for a puck-moving defenseman by sending a first-rounder to the Toronto Maple Leafs for Tyson Barrie, Vegas decided that they could find a different way to bolster this team.
And, by different, the Golden Knights opted to further bolster what was already one of their biggest strengths.
By trading for Robin Lehner, and sending Malcolm Subban to the Chicago Blackhawks, the Knights now boast one of the best goalie tandems in the entire NHL.
Granted, Marc-Andre Fleury has hardly been at the peak of his powers this year but he has shown signs of getting back to his best over the span of the last few games.
While Fleury will remain the bona fide number 1 in Sin City, and rightly so, the Golden Knights now have a rare luxury with Lehner as option 1B.
If Fleury needs to ease back on his schedule down the stretch in order to recharge the batteries, then the Knights will be safe in the knowledge that Lehner can come in and carry the load.
Lehner is much as an insurance policy in case Fleury goes down, god forbid, as he is a secret weapon for the Knights.
After all, Lehner’s .918 Save Percentage this year is 11th in the league and he’s been worth 10.1 goals saved above average, ranked 13th in the NHL.
In other words, the 28-year-old ranks high in a number of metrics and his body of work over the last couple of years backs up the fact that he is an elite goalie.
So, it has been made clear that the Knights feel their best pathway to the Stanley Cup is through their goaltending and they now have two guys that have ice in their veins and that can get the job done.
You can’t win without elite goaltending, after all.
That is the point. The trade for Lehner clearly demonstrates once again that the Vegas Golden Knights are going all in to win.
They are in no mood to mess around anymore and the fact that Lehner could be seen as a pure rental is testament to the fact that this front office and ownership desperately crave a championship.
Lehner wasn’t the only piece of business done by the Golden Knights on Monday, of course, with the franchise also acquiring forward Nick Cousins from the Montreal Canadiens for a 2021 Fourth-Round pick.
Cousins is a swiss-army knife type player and he will add an offensive punch to the bottom six, while being able to take on any number of roles entrusted on him.
And, to then round off what was a manic and potentially defining day, the Knights re-signed veteran defenseman Nick Holden to a two-year contract with a $1.7 million Average Annual Value.
Once a mere passenger on the blueline, Holden has morphed into a steady presence for Vegas both on and off the ice, and the 32-year-old will continue to give the Golden Knights some defensive stability for the next two years.
But, it will be the sensational Robin Lehner trade that continues to get people to talk over the next few days and rightly so.
It was another calculated but ruthless and aggressive move by the front office, led by General Manager Kelly McCrimmon, who refuse to rest on their laurels.
As other teams around them in the Pacific Division got better on Monday, the Vegas Golden Knights waited patiently before once again rolling the dice and going all in.
For the second straight year the Golden Knights sent seismic waves through the NHL with a blockbuster move, and for the second straight year this organization proved they won’t rest until they have the Stanley Cup in their grasp.