In Las Vegas, some hotel rooms have multiple floors and a window-side bathtub in the living room for a view of Strip’s neon lights. The swimming pools are essentially sun-soaked nightclubs, with Lil Jon behind the DJ booth supplying the sound track. The hockey games begin with an on-ice medieval show that features glowing drummers repelling from the ceiling. Even the rental-car companies offer Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
Advertisement
In a city built on over-the-top extravagance, it’s fitting that when its sports teams win championships, they do it big.
Locals still reminisce about the UNLV men’s basketball national championship in 1990, when Jerry Tarkanian’s Runnin’ Rebels demolished Duke 103-73. The 30-point blowout remains the largest margin of victory in a title game to this day.
On Tuesday, the Golden Knights added a championship to the city’s trophy case, winning the Stanley Cup in historically dominant fashion. Vegas pummeled the Florida Panthers 9-3 in the clinching game, tying the 1936 Detroit Red Wings and 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs for the most goals scored in a Cup Final game. Neither of those happened in the title-clinching game.
The blowout victory at T-Mobile Arena was a fitting way for the Golden Knights to end what was a commanding playoff run, in which Vegas ran roughshod over the rest of the NHL. The Stanley Cup is often described as the hardest trophy in sports to win, but it certainly didn’t look like it this year.
The Golden Knights went 15-6 on their way to winning the Cup. The only time they trailed in a series was after losing the first game of the first round to Winnipeg. They won the next four games in that series, and never fell behind again.
Vegas scored 88 goals in the playoffs, tied for the most by any team since 1993. The 68 goals at five-on-five is the most since the NHL started keeping the stat in 2009-10, with the next-closest team (the 2013-14 Los Angeles Kings) scoring only 60.
After finishing 14th in scoring in the regular season, the Golden Knights became an offensive juggernaut in the playoffs. Jonathan Marchessault scored 13 goals in the last 15 games, ending the season on a 10-game point streak. Mark Stone finished his 11-goal playoff run with the first hat trick in a Cup-clinching game in more than 100 years. Jack Eichel led the league with 26 points, and both William Karlsson and Chandler Stephenson reached double-digit goals. It was an incredibly balanced attack that ended up being unstoppable in the end.
Advertisement
A major reason was the way coach Bruce Cassidy configured his lineup. Once the roster was healthy, just in time for the playoffs, Cassidy opted to spread the offensive talent evenly across three lines rather than loading up a line or two. He used a formula for each of his top three forward lines that ended up working brilliantly.
Cassidy paired two highly-skilled offensive players in Eichel and Marchessault with Ivan Barbashev, who plays a direct style of hockey and isn’t afraid to play in front of the net. He constantly crashed the crease to control the front of the net while Eichel and Marchessault made plays around the perimeter, and the result was a highly-efficient line that scored nearly every night.
The other two lines were built very similarly. On one, Stone and Stephenson served as the playmakers while Brett Howden filled the role of the net-front presence. Stone and Stephenson have great chemistry and play well off each other, and Howden picked up five goals of his own by putting himself in good positions around the net.
Karlsson and Reilly Smith did the same on the other line, making skilled plays on the rush and around the perimeter of the offensive zone. Meanwhile, Michael Amadio truly embraced his role in the blue paint, and scored big goals himself.
All three of those forward lines produced consistently and were interchangeable. Combine that with a fourth line of Nicolas Roy, William Carrier and Keegan Kolesar, which is trustworthy in its own zone and effective at holding onto pucks below the goal line, and you have a deep, balanced lineup that doesn’t give opposing teams a chance to take a breath.
Vegas’ dominance wasn’t only due to scoring. The Golden Knights leaned on defense all season long, and that was no difference in the playoffs. The talented blue line, led by Alex Pietrangelo was stellar, allowing only 33 goals at even strength over 22 games in the postseason.
Advertisement
Like the forward group, the defensive core’s biggest strength is its depth. The veteran top pairing of Pietrangelo and Alec Martinez matched up against top lines, but they weren’t asked to play 25 minutes every night thanks to the reliability of the other pairs. Shea Theodore and Brayden McNabb have been anchors on the back end for six years in Vegas, and the third pair of Nicolas Hague and Zach Whitecloud were strong – sometimes even leading the team in five-on-five ice time.
The balanced approach led to a healthy, fresh group of defenders even four rounds into the postseason, and allowed the Golden Knights to dominate at a level rarely seen in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Vegas outscored teams by 33 goals at even strength, which is by far the most since the league started tracking the stat in 2009-10.
Cup Winners since 2009-10
| Team | Season | 5v5 Goals | 5v5 GA | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2022-23 | 68 | 33 | 35 | |
2010-11 | 60 | 33 | 27 | |
2019-20 | 56 | 38 | 18 | |
2021-22 | 58 | 42 | 16 | |
2020-21 | 47 | 32 | 15 | |
2018-19 | 56 | 41 | 15 | |
2012-13 | 49 | 35 | 14 | |
2017-18 | 52 | 39 | 13 | |
2013-14 | 60 | 47 | 13 | |
2011-12 | 34 | 23 | 11 | |
2009-10 | 49 | 40 | 9 | |
2015-16 | 50 | 42 | 8 | |
2016-17 | 51 | 44 | 7 | |
2014-15 | 49 | 45 | 4 |
Goalie Adin Hill obviously played a huge part in that as well. Vegas’ defense didn’t break down often, but when it did he was there to make big stops. His sky-high .932 save percentage and 7.7 goals saved above expected were both incredible accomplishments for a goalie in his first playoffs.
Vegas’ overall goal differential of plus-31 (outscoring teams 88-57) is the third-highest of any 16-win champion in NHL history, trailing only the 1989-90 Edmonton Oilers (plus-33) and the 1994-95 New Jersey Devils (plus-33).
The Golden Knights didn’t just run away with the final game of this Cup run, they ran teams off the ice with regularity. In total, nine of Vegas’ 16 wins came by three or more goals, which is the most since 1983. The way the team closed each series out was particularly impressive.
Series-clinching wins
| Date | Opponent | Score |
|---|---|---|
4/27/23 | 4-1 | |
5/14/23 | 5-2 | |
5/29 | 6-0 | |
6/13/23 | 9-3 |
Throughout this entire playoff run, when Vegas needed its best game, it got it. Which brings up the next point: This team had “it.” What exactly “it” is, is hard to explain, but the 2022-23 Golden Knights had “it” in spades.
Magic. The clutch gene. Good fortune. The hockey gods smiling down on them. Whatever you’d like to call it, the Golden Knights absolutely had it during this run. Vegas was shockingly healthy through the postseason, never needing to change its lineup outside of replacing Laurent Brossoit with Hill when he went down in the second round.
Advertisement
They also executed at a ridiculously high level, especially at the most important moments of games. They did it all season. It’s how they finished with the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference despite scoring the 14th-most goals and allowing the 11th-fewest. Vegas wasn’t dominant at anything during the regular season, except for winning. It didn’t win based on how many goals it scored; it was about when they were scored.
After the All-Star break, the Golden Knights went 22-4-5 to win the Pacific Division and the Western Conference. In those final 31 games, they outscored teams 112-81 for a 58 percent goal share. They did it despite earning only 50.2 percent of the expected goals and 50.5 percent of the high-danger chances. Simply put, Vegas was drawing even in terms of the quantity and quality of the scoring chances in games, but finishing their chances at a much higher rate and winning a lot of games because of it.
That was without Stone in the lineup. When he returned in the postseason, it improved that execution rate even further. As dominant as Vegas was in the playoffs, it was actually outshot 705-662, and lost the battle of high-danger chances 275-271.
How did the Golden Knights out-perform those numbers by such a wide margin? By controlling the front of the net on both ends of the ice, and by scoring clutch goals in crucial moments.
Because Vegas’ big, powerful defense core protected the front of its net so well, the chances allowed were actually not as dangerous as the metrics would suggest. They forced shots to come from further away, and cleared lanes for Hill to see the puck. Once the initial save was made, their control over the net front led to easy clears and very few second chances.
The same goes on the other end of the ice, where Vegas’ forwards consistently crashed the net and made life difficult on opposing goaltenders. Expected goal models can’t account for traffic in front, making the Golden Knights’ actual chances more dangerous than they appear from a shot-plotting calculation.
By controlling the good ice as well as they did, the Golden Knights made four consecutive goalies look average at best. It’s not as if they faced an easy road of goaltending. Vegas started the postseason with former Vezina winner Connor Hellebuyck, followed by Calder Trophy finalist Stuart Skinner, Jake Oettinger and Sergei Bobrovsky on a heater.
As every championship team does, the Golden Knights consistently delivered in the biggest moments. In their second-round series against Edmonton, which felt the most competitive of the four, they regularly answered the Oilers’ power-play goals with a tying goal on the following shift. It’s a big reason they won eight games after giving up the first goal, which is tied for the most in a single postseason in league history.
Advertisement
The final example came in the Game 5 clincher against Florida. The Panthers were controlling the early portion of the first period, swarming Vegas in its own zone and generating dangerous looks. Vegas players admitted after they were a bit nervous and tight with the Cup on the line, and it showed.
Florida’s pressure eventually drew a penalty midway through the frame, and on the ensuing power play, the Panthers set up Aleksander Barkov for a grade-A chance, all alone in front of the net. He deked around Hill, but Hill robbed him at the last minute by flaring his left leg out to stuff the backhand shot. Only 18 seconds later, Stone roofed his shot for a shorthanded goal and the Golden Knights never looked back.
“We’re not a team that just trucks teams,” Cassidy said early in the playoffs. “Finding ways to win has been a motto for us all year.”
He was right for most of the year. Then the Golden Knights elevated their game and trucked their way to a dominant Stanley Cup championship.
(Photo of Jack Eichel and Ivan Barbashev: Stephen R. Sylvanie / USA Today)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k29obHBmZnxzfJFsZmluX2aCcLPOpZuepl2gu6qzx62qZquklrutsdhmmq6oXauyqK3SaA%3D%3D