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They Are U(Knighted)

March 13, 2018, 11:13 AM ET [0 Comments]
Jay Greenberg
Blogger •NHL Hall of Fame writer • RSSArchiveCONTACT
We’ve seen a thing or two since getting our first hockey gig in 1974.

Witnessed the Islanders win 19 straight playoff series. Watched the Flyers go 35 games without losing in 1979-80 and stopped believing what I was seeing for the last 25.

Through the first, last and all of Wayne Gretzky’s 2855 points in between, was cognizant that I was watching a miracle every time his skinny body vaulted the boards. Served on the beat throughout an era when Gretzky and Mario Lemieux made Steve Yzerman, the seventh all-time NHL scorer, the third-best player in the NHL by a Manitoban mile. On foot. In the dead of winter.

Saw the Isles, Flyers and Kings come from 3-0 down to win series, was there the night the Oilers, the greatest offensive machine in the NHL history, put the puck in their own net, too, with 14 minutes left to lose a Game Seven.

We have seen a series turn on the measurement of an illegal stick, and another on too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty with 2:34 to go in Game Seven.

We even once witnessed Jose Theodore accepting a Hart Trophy, Jim Carey holding the Vezina, and Jack McIlhargey scoring on a breakaway. But I’ve never laid these jaded four eyes on a first year addition to the NHL with a .688 percentage of points and not since the 1926-27 Rangers has any come close. Assuming there will be 15 more expansions in my lifetime and I live to be even older than Jaromir Jagr, we will never see the likes of the Vegas Golden Knights again.

Shook my head in disbelief like Wally Harris after a Bill Barber dive when the Knights started 8-1. Eyes bugged like out like Domonic Roussel with Teemu Selanne coming on a breakaway when the Golden Knights were 23-9-2 at Christmas. And now, like Brayden Schenn on a cold streak, I need a crane to lift my chin off the ice that Vegas is 45-19-5 and has a 12-point lead in the Pacific Division with 13 games to go.

The Knights won again Monday night in Philly, without Reilly Smith, James Neal and Luca Sbisa, two top six scorers and a top four defenseman. Gave up two leads, took two dumb third period penalties and then still calmly capitalized in the end on a clearing mistake by the more experienced team to end a road trip 4-1. The winning goal was from an 8-goal scorer, Ryan Carpenter, not far removed from waivers. Vegas received good goaltending again in smiling Marc-Andre Fleury’s 400th career win, and smilingly and selflessly went about their business, as they uncannily do.

“The only expectation we have had from Day One is having fun,” said coach Gerard Gallant. “We have a bad night, we forget about it and play the next night.

“That’s the way it’s been all year.”

We were taken aback and impressed in 1993-94, when the first-year Florida Panthers went 33-34-17 and missed the playoffs by just one point. But the thesaurus fails us about these Golden Knights.

Astonished? That’s a good word for when Brandon Manning makes a good outlet pass. Flabbergasted? Yes, that Marc Bergevin still has a job.

Staggering? Would describe some Thomas Greiss saves. But the Knights have left the NHL speechless. At the trading deadline they bought (Tomas Tatar), didn’t sell, rewarding players not just happy to be in the league another year, but will want to be in one more round this spring.

“There isn’t anybody in the hockey world who would say, ‘I could have predicted this,’” said John Vanbiesbrouck, in 1993-94 the Panthers’ goalie, now GM of the USHL Muskegon Lumberjacks. “And the most amazing thing to me is looking at their (plus-48) goal differential.

“They are not just playing .500 hockey with little or no scoring differential like we did (plus-one for the season). It’s not just two goals per game. They’re scoring.”

The first year Flyers were 31-32-11 but were part of a 6-team division made up entirely of the infant teams, who played each other eight times and the six established teams just four. The Ducks, who came in with the Panthers, won 33 games, and the Blue Jackets and Preds debuted with 28 victories, not bad considering four teams came in over a three-year period, draining the expansion pool, but from a league with a greater volume of talent. In 1974, when Washington and Kansas City became the 11th and 12th additions in eight years, the Scouts were forced to take three players who had already been selected in two previous expansion drafts.

We’re not considering the four WHA teams admitted in 1979, because they all were allowed to keep their two best skaters–including Gretzky and Mark Howe. But while there were legendarily hapless debuts like the Caps (eight wins), Senators (10), and Islanders (12), most newbies were given enough by the league to be respectable from the start, even if many slipped back the following years.

The Panthers did not, making the Stanley Cup finals in their third season, Vanbiesbrouck still in their net with the same chip on his shoulder that fuels the Knights 25 years later. It goes deeper, he says, than each individual’s feeling at being put out in the trash for expansion pickers. Rejection forges bonds.

“It wasn’t like in the locker room you heard ‘Bleep the Rangers or the bleep the Blues,’” recalls Vanbiesbrouck. “It was much more an under-the-breath feeling that we wanted to play for a guy when he was playing against his old team. And for an expansion club, playing against a former team happens every night.

“Anything that gets people up to play for each other during an 82-game schedule is a big-time thing. When the Rangers came to Florida, we had big crowds of Ranger fans. Montreal, the same. As a player, you are very sensitive to these things.

“The other factor that people may not consider is that you don’t want to be embarrassed. Every night out you play a little more desperate because of that.

“We had workers, selfless player. When players are interchangeable for every situation, that only makes a team deeper, it doesn’t have to keep going to the well with the same guys. That’s a huge factor for a coach and management. One guy isn’t getting all the attention and you have to manage his stardom. You look at some of the other teams; managing stardom is half the battle.

“Then too, one of the bigger similarities between the Knights and us is coaching. Roger Neilson was a fantastic coach and Gerard Gallant is obviously proving that.

“And you’ll laugh when you hear this, both teams have had good goaltending.”

In the expansion draft that stocked the Panthers and Mighty Ducks, teams were allowed to protect one netminder, five defensemen and nine forwards. For Vegas, the clubs would protect 11. Of course, just one team selecting this time made a huge difference for the Knights. But so did getting, theoretically, a team’s 12th best player rather than its 15th.

“One thing going for us was that (owner) Wayne Huizenga said ‘Pick whomever you want, we can pay them,” recalls Bob Clarke, the first GM of the Panthers. “Scott Mellanby was a pretty expensive player for that day and we could take him.

“We concentrated on getting hard workers and character guys and I told them from Day One, ‘We’re here to win games. If a player becomes available who can make us better, I will bring him in.’ And Roger did a good job telling them that their teams didn’t want them, ‘let’s show ‘em.’

“But what George and (assistant GM) Kelly McCrimmon have done has gone beyond what we did. They did an incredible job finding guys like (Jonathan) Marchessault and (William) Karlsson, who were about to become way above-average players.”

The talent pool has grown, particularly with Americans, probably making a team’s 12th best player better than a 15th best player at the turn of the century, when the Wild, Predators, Thrashers and Blue Jackets joined up. “Hadn’t thought about that,” said McPhee, and that appears to be the only thing he didn’t think about. But he also acknowledges the cap has spread out the talent so evenly over the 31 teams, that with good choices the Knights are able to be more that just respectable.

“That’s very true,” McPhee said. “And the cap also helped us in that some teams were stressed by it and were able to give us a better player, an asset, or both, by us taking a contract from them. We did that a number of times.”

So the Knights have had better parts. But in what become a universally four-line league long before they joined it, the Knights have been made into a whole by Gallant in much the same way Neilson did the Panthers. Vegas forwards one through six in scoring are within 1:53 of each other in ice time per game. Six defensemen have been getting 18 minutes a night.

“I would say that’s almost all the reason for our success,” said defenseman Nate Schmidt, a third pair guy in Washington now living the dream. “It is incredible to have that kind of depth in your lineup and it makes it easier to get into the game.

“You start playing with more confidence. That’s you can ask for as a defenseman. The more you play, the more fun you are having. And we are having a blast.”

Gallant never made the playoffs before getting fired in year three with Jackets, and only once in two-plus he coached the Panthers. But in that one post-season appearance, they pushed the Islanders, for whom McPhee was advising Garth Snow after being let go by Washington. “Gerard had his team playing as well as they could play for their talent level,” said McPhee.

“He reminds me of Pat Quinn (they worked together in Vancouver). He gets everybody in the game, he’s trusted by the players, but there is a line you don’t cross.”

In four weeks, the Knights cross over into uncharted territory–the playoffs, where almost 100 years of evidence suggests that somebody’s best players will prove better than someone else’s. Provided they have adequate help, that’s what true stars do–raise their level when the games count the most.

Can the Knights take it to another level, the required level? It’s a good question. To this point, they have worn down opponents and exhausted skeptics.

“Maybe the first 10 games, [teams] said, ‘Okay, this is another road game, and its against a new franchise,” said Pierre Edouard-Bellemare. “And then it was too late for them that night because we were on top.

“Now when we came to rinks they realize, ‘This team has been on top the whole year so we have to be serious.’ Easier, or harder, we do the same thing every day, don’t think about those things. It’s simple minded but it working for us.

“Every night there is someone playing against his old team, making it easier to focus. Flower in Pittsburgh. Tonight, in Philly they will be playing for me. Every player on the team is from somewhere.”

On the team out of nowhere, if such a thing exists in these days of obsessive video and analytic study. As the season has gone along, Gallant says he doesn’t see much of a difference in the intensity level of the opponents, in belated acknowledgment of the Knights being for real.

“The players in the NHL are really smart,” he said. “When they look at our lineup on the board, they know it isn’t a typical expansion team. Neal, Marchessault, Reilly Smith, you know it’s a good team”

As Clarke says, ‘In retrospect, looking at what they have, what George did in Washington, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.’

Hunters are soon to become the hunted, so does that change the dynamic as Vegas, a division winner plays a wild card team in the first round? You know, the pressure suddenly mounts?

Yeah, on Seattle to beat this.
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