Vegas Golden Knights Tickets

The Golden Knights played their first season in 2017-18 and were one of the best stories in sports. Though the rules of the expansion the draft favored the Golden Knights more than past expansion drafts had favored prior expansion teams, most hockey fans and media expected the team to finish close to last place and that it would take a few years before Vegas would be a competitive team.

The 2017-18 season started, and the Golden Knights just kept winning. Their home arena, T-Mobile Arena, became one of the loudest buildings in hockey and one of the hardest for opposing teams to play in. The Golden Knights won in spite of injuries, notably to their goalies early in the season. At one point, the Golden Knights had to start the fourth goalie in their depth chart. It didn’t matter. Vegas won anyway. They won the Pacific Division in their inaugural season (by far the best inaugural season of any NHL team) and made the playoffs. They even reached the Stanley Cup Final, but the magic they’d been channeling finally ran out. They lost to the Washington Capitals in five games.

Few of Vegas’ selections during the expansion draft made waves at the time, but they sure look good in hindsight. It seemed a forgone conclusion that the Knights would take Marc Andre Fleury from the Pittsburgh Penguins, who opted to protect a younger goalie. But few could have guessed that Fleury, now in his 30s, would have a career year in both the regular season and playoffs. The Columbus Blue Jackets traded Vegas a draft pick so that Vegas would select William Karlsson instead of the Jackets’ backup goalie. Karlsson had never scored more than nine goals in a full NHL season. In Vegas, he scored 43.

The jury’s still out on what Vegas’ early success means. Is the rest of the NHL terrible at evaluating talent? Were the Knights just lucky? Were they actually as good as they looked? After a promising start, the Golden Knights still have a lot to prove.