The Vegas Golden Knights were built to lose. Or at their very best make things interesting for a quick minute or two before ultimately becoming the trade deadline's biggest seller.
Instead you're seeing the early beginnings of the greatest expansion team in NHL history.
Shootout losers in Toronto last night, the Golden Knights, who are down to their fourth-string goaltender, sit just three points out of first place in the Pacific Division, and their plus-9 goal differential is the fourth-best in the NHL, which is incredibly impressive given their aforementioned issues in net since Marc-Andre Fleury went down with a concussion and backup Malcolm Subban was lost to a groin injury. They're currently paced for an 111-point season, too, which is obviously not what anybody expected, and still considered playoff-level should they become tempered or slide even just a little bit.
And is the thought of a first-year playoff berth enough to make Golden Knights general manager George McPhee give pause to the thought of a massive selloff later this season?
There's no denying the arsenal of trade chips for the Knights this deadline; Pending unrestricted free agents such as Jonathan Marchessault (34 goals and 60 points over his last 86 NHL games), David Perron (11 points in 14 games), and James Neal (eight goals and 12 points in 14 games and 25 goals in 80 career playoff games) have immense value. And their bevy of pending free agent defensemen -- Brayden McNabb, Clayton Stoner (if and when healthy), and Luca Sbisa -- would all have value on the trade market as depth pieces on a Cup contender.
And there's no denying that the quickest way to rebuild in today's NHL is through the draft, and by acquiring as many picks as you possibly can. The Knights have done a solid job of this from the jump, too, and it should certainly remain a focus.
But this current team is pretty good.
They're able to play a heavy game, a quick-skating game, and can hang with almost anyone.
The players have bought into what head coach Gerard Gallant is selling, and their success in that regard sort of speaks for itself. They're presently gifted by some strong (or should we say favorable) advanced metrics -- they have the eighth-best PDO and sixth-best five-on-five shooting percentage in the league -- but there's a core seemingly built within all of this.
Which could serve as a better building block than assorted draft picks.
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— Michael Augello (@MikeInBuffalo) August 2, 2017