Global Courant
William Carrier glanced into the Vegas Golden Knights locker room at all the talent around him: leading scorer Jonathan Marchessault, frontline center Jack Eichel, captain Mark Stone and more.
He marveled at the depth of the team and what it has meant.
“It makes a good team, right?” said carrier. “You win a lot of games with that.”
And finally the Stanley Cup.
The Golden Knights are NHL champions for the first time thanks to the deepest roster in the league, helping them to withstand injury at every position and sustain a lengthy playoff run. They put on a 20-player production over four rounds, beating Winnipeg, Edmonton, Dallas and then Florida in the finals with waves of talent that overwhelmed every opponent.
“Our draft has been a strength all year,” said freshman coach and first-time Stanley Cup winner Bruce Cassidy. “(Opponents) might have some better players or a better penalty kill or power play or goaltender — now we’re starting to see that our guys are pretty good too. I really believe it has been the great strength of our team. I just think it’s been really good for us.”
Cassidy said in the middle of the finals that he thought Vegas had the best hockey team “from player 1 through 20.” That’s hard to argue with now, after the Boston Bruins (the team that coached Cassidy to six playoff appearances before firing him last year) lost to Florida in the first round of their record-breaking regular season.
The Golden Knights knocked out the Panthers in five games, taking advantage of their four strong forwards and three big defenders who made life as easy as possible on the journeyman goaltender turned stalwart Adin Hill, himself a prime example of that depth after he hit a second wash. – round injury replacement. With just 12 forward spots to fill, Phil Kessel—a two-time Stanley Cup winner in Pittsburgh—and trade deadline fetching Teddy Blueger were healthy scrapes.
“You’ve got enough good guys here to make five lines,” said Carrier, one of six original Knights players to leave after their inaugural season in 2017-18, which ended with a loss in the finals. “We just roll them. Some nights some lines will have better nights than others, and they step up their game and it’s a great thing to have. Anyone can score at any time and everyone plays well.”
Vegas is only the fifth team since the start of the salary cap in 2005-06 to have three players score 10 or more goals during a postseason. It is the only four-player team this year with eight or more.
But it wasn’t just about scoring. Allowing fewer than three goals per game, the Golden Knights punished opponents with calculated physicality, a depth advantage that ensured no player had to be overextended.
“Everyone has to give a little bit,” said defenseman Alex Pietrangelo, now a two-time Cup winner after leading St. Louis to its first championship in 2019. a few minutes for each other to keep the energy up during the game.
Pietrangelo, the leading free agent in franchise history to sign a seven-year, $61 million deal in 2020, called it the deepest team he’s ever been on.
How deep? Hill was one of five different goaltenders to win a game for Vegas this season. Since replacing injured starter Laurent Brossoit in Game 3 against the Oilers, Hill has gone 11-4 with the best goals-against average and save percentage in the playoffs.
“He has played well for us all year,” said Pietrangelo. “All our goalkeepers have played well, no matter who plays here. It’s an honor for him that he was prepared when he came in there a few series ago.
Five years after a loss to the Capitals caused the visiting locker room to become the scene of a Cup-winning celebration, president of hockey operations George McPhee and Kelly McCrimmon, his assistant who was promoted to run the daily show as general manager, have looked to this moment worked up to. McCrimmon said the front office knew the success of the inaugural season was “lightning in a bottle” and took big steps to add Pietrangelo, Stone, Eichel and others in building a championship caliber roster.
That process included saying goodbye to beloved goalkeeper Marc-Andre Fleury and making some tough decisions.
“If you have these jobs and you want to avoid the hard decisions, you probably shouldn’t have these jobs,” McCrimmon said. “But it’s been a process that, I think, has been calculated. I think it’s based on good decisions. Made for the right reasons.”
The reason, the end goal, was to win the Stanley Cup. Depth made it possible.
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AP NHL Playoffs: and
(TagsToTranslate)Stanley Cup Finals
