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Before these Western Conference-leading Golden Knights, the 1993-94 Florida Panthers were widely regarded as the most competitive expansion team ever. Florida finished just one point out of the playoffs, while their 83 points is still an expansion record.

Hall of Famer Bobby Clarke was the Panthers GM that season. I caught up with Clarke to get his thoughts about Florida's near-miss and Vegas's unprecedented success.

HockeyBuzz: What parallels do you see between these Golden Knights and your Panthers?

Bobby Clarke: We got within one point of the playoffs. These guys are among the top four or five teams in the league. They move pretty fast. We didn't do that.

The similarity would be with the character of the players.

Vegas came in with only one team, we came in with two. The assets which we had available to us were split between two teams. They got a better team to start with than we did.

You're still getting players that, in both cases, somebody didn't want. So you convince those players that they can still win, use a style of play that can win. It worked for us in Florida, it's worked in Vegas.

HB: Do you think the Golden Knights are for real?

BC: Absolutely.

I didn't know Gerard Gallant. He coached in Florida, he's been around. I might have played against him, I don't know. (laughs) I knew him as a player, not as a coach. Obviously, he's a very good coach.

I thought they'd have a shot at making the playoffs. I didn't think they would be where they are today.

HB: Going back to the Panthers' inaugural season, at the Trade Deadline, John Vanbiesbrouck was enjoying an MVP-type campaign. There were rumors that teams were interested in him. Was there ever any thought about trading him?

BC: None. We knew we had to have goaltending. As an expansion team, you have to have good goaltending.

HB: Vegas has a similar situation where they have a couple big stars which teams want in James Neal and Jonathan Marchessault. So they have a question of whether or not they should cash in on these guys while they're hot.

BC: George will know what to do, don't worry. He's been through the woods a few times. He and Kelly McCrimmon have done an outstanding job there.

George knows how to build a winner, he did it in Washington. It's not by accident Vegas is good. It's by good management.

HB: During 1993-94, the Panthers beat the Islanders late in March. With nine games left, you were in eighth place, four points ahead of the Flyers, six ahead of the Islanders. But then, you went 1-4-4 to end the season. New York caught you. What happened?

BC: I don't know if anything happened. The games were really close.

We were really, really good defensively, but we had trouble scoring goals. There wasn't too many goal-scoring players made available to us at the expansion draft.

We went with the grinders and the workers and the character. It paid off for us.

Other teams have the same type of player and if they have scorers, they usually beat you.

You have to have good players to put the puck in the net. We just didn't have enough at that time.

HB: Do you think the team got a little tight? Roger Neilson benched leading goal scorer Bob Kudelski against the Rangers late in the season. Mike Hough said during this stretch, "We're definitely feeling the pressure."

Do you think maybe they started looking at the standings, thinking about the history which they were about to create?

BC: I don't know if we convinced them. But we tried to convince them that we were a National Hockey League team. That we deserved to be in the playoffs.

It's not luck. There's no extra pressure just because you're the first expansion team that could do it. Play as the NHL team that you are. And see what happens.

HB: So for a team like Vegas, they're riding high, locker room's feeling good right now, you've seen this before for an expansion team. What's your advice for avoiding a letdown?

BC: Everybody at the start of the year wants to play an expansion team. They think, we're going to kick these guys' asses, it'll be a nice night out.

Vegas isn't fooling anybody anymore. Nobody's going to take them easy.

It's going to get tougher as the season progresses. But I'm sure they're going to be made aware of that. They're not going to be caught with their hands tied behind their back.

I think they're going to make the playoffs easily. They're better than most teams in the league.

HB: Yeah, I think so too. It took a lot for me to be convinced, but they've won me over, so to speak.

BC: I worked against George for a long time. I played against him. Him and McCrimmon know exactly what they're doing. There's nobody who's going to pull the wool over his eyes.

He's in the top five or six general managers in the league.

HB: Is there a point where you might even consider adding players?

Well...they'll look at what they've got, what they've got coming. If they can add somebody who can make them better and he wasn't too old, I would think they would want to do that.

I'm just guessing. You're not talking about a team trying to make the playoffs. You're talking now about a team that is looking at how far they can go in the playoffs.

HB: Right, right. That leads to my next question. There's never been an expansion team like the Golden Knights. So do you perhaps approach the construction of a winner in a radical way? Like adding a superstar right now?

BC: The one thing that I found when I was with that Panthers team...

You've got a really good team. And you've got to be really careful about adding and subtracting.

You don't want to screw it up by thinking you've got a better player who turns out to be not as good with the rest of the guys. You've got a good, good team. They're going to get in the playoffs with what they've got.

HB: Looking back at the Panthers...in the first two seasons, they missed the playoffs by one point each year. Third year, lost in Finals. You left after the first season, but you helped build the infrastructure for the Finals team.

But then, they might have felt pressure to stay relevant in market, they traded for Pavel Bure, things of that nature. That led to a decade out of the playoffs and a market that's still cold to the sport.

Do you regret the win-now path you took or would you do it the same?

BC: Well, when we started, we were in a small rink in Miami.

Wayne Huizenga owned the team. There were no restriction on the amount of money [we could spend]. But when he decided to sell, that's when they traded for Bure. I guess it enhanced the value of the team.

But it basically was the beginning of the end of the team that they had...

HB: The style?

BC: Yeah. The style, the game, everything, they tried to change everything and it backfired.

Every market, if your team is winning, it's going to sell out. Nobody wants to come and watch their home team get their asses kicked.

So when teams do that, Chicago, Pittsburgh, they just quit trying to win so they could get high draft picks, the people quit coming out.

It paid off, but if you go 5-6 years with nobody in your building...I don't think George McPhee would ever do that.

HB: So there are no regrets about your approach with the Panthers? Right thing for the right time in the market?

BC: Absolutely.

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