The Gold(en Knight) Standard

As the Stanley Cup Playoffs move into the conference finals, the Vegas Golden Knights find themselves in a very familiar position--playing for the Clarence Campbell Bowl.  In just their sixth year as a franchise, they're playing in their fourth Western Conference Final/Stanley Cup Semifinal.  They haven't just been a model of consistency.  They've been one of the best teams in the entire freakin' NHL!

Consider: In 2018, they reach the Stanley Cup Final (and have home ice) in their inaugural season.  In 2020, they end up as the No. 1 seed in the West after going 3-0 in the seeding round robin the Edmonton bubble.  In 2021, they finished tied with Colorado for the most points in the league, only losing the President's Trophy on a tiebreaker.  And this season, they're the No. 1 seed in the West.  That's a pretty good six-year stretch for anyone, let alone an expansion team.  All they're missing is a Cup!

When the NHL put a team in Las Vegas and set up the expansion draft so that the team would be good immediately, I don't think they had any idea the Golden Knights would be this good!  Expanding to Las Vegas has gone better than anyone possibly could've imagined.  And, crazy as it sounds, the Golden Knights have become one of the NHL's model franchises.  Not only that, they're the gold standard by which all future expansion teams will be measured.

They aren't the first expansion team to find immediate success, of course.  The Florida Panthers made it to the Final in their fourth season.  In the NFL, both Carolina and Jacksonville reached the conference championship game in 1996, their second season of existence.  A year later, the five-year-old Florida Marlins won the World Series, then the four-year-old Arizona Diamondbacks did the same in 2001 (after winning the NL West in 1999, their second year).

I'm not counting the St. Louis Blues, who reached the Stanley Cup Final in of their first three years of existence, because of the way the playoffs were set up at the time.  The NHL put all six expansion teams in the same division, guaranteeing one of them would make the Final (and get their butts kicked).  Likewise, the 1998 Chicago Fire don't count since their MLS Cup came in the league's third season.  The NHL, meanwhile, is a firmly established league with more than 100 years of history.

There's another big difference between the Golden Knights and those other expansion teams.  The others were built to have that instant success, but they didn't maintain it.  Most of them didn't even try.  The Marlins traded the virtually entire team away that offseason!  Vegas got that early success, but wasn't satisfied to leave it there.  The Knights want to be good every year.

The closest comparison might be the Cleveland Browns.  The Browns won the 1950 NFL Championship in their first season in the league, their first of six straight NFL Championship Game appearances.  However, the Browns have a major asterisk next to that run.  They came over from the All-America Football Conference, and won all four titles in that league's four-year existence.  So they weren't starting from scratch upon joining the NFL.  The Golden Knights, on the other hand, were.

It shouldn't be this easy.  Expansion teams are supposed to go through growing pains.  Even good ones!  Look at the Kraken.  They were good last year and still missed the playoffs before making the playoffs for the first time this season (in Year 2).  Even that timeline is quick.  And we have no idea if they'll maintain it.  Even if they do, though, there's no way they'll be able to match what the Knights have done!

Las Vegas is all about entertainment.  Hence those ridiculously elaborate pregame shows before every single Golden Knights home game.  And they knew the novelty factor would wear off pretty quickly if the team wasn't worth watching (which is why I think the A's will suddenly become good again once they move).  But still, wanting to win and actually winning are very different things.  Especially for an expansion team.

Until the Golden Knights came around, expansion teams were always made up of rookies and other teams' castoffs.  There'd be a big-name free agent or two who serves as the face of the franchise, but, otherwise, it was generally unproven young guys or players other teams either didn't want or didn't care if they lost.  But the Golden Knights' expansion draft was set up so that they'd definitely get some pretty good players.  Which is exactly what they did.

Was the expansion draft set up to the Knights' benefit?  Absolutely!  And all credit to them for taking advantage of it.  By the time they did the Kraken's expansion draft a few years later, the other teams wised up and the player pool was very different.  They didn't want Seattle to pull a Vegas, which the Kraken didn't.

That generous expansion draft was in 2017.  It can't be used as the reason why the Knights are good anymore.  Only a handful of original Golden Knights are even still on the team.  No, they've kept it going because of shrewd trades and smart free agent signings.  Simply put, they have a front office that knows what it's doing.  Which is how, despite being in just its sixth season, Vegas really has become the model NHL franchise.  With no signs of that changing anytime soon.

Of course, there's one thing missing.  And, as successful as they've been, they won't consider the season a success until they win that ultimate prize.  You know that Cup is coming, though.  Whether it's this season or next season or some other time in the future.  And just imagine the party on the Strip once the Knights finally do.

Expansion or not, there are plenty of NHL teams that wish they could be the Vegas Golden Knights right now.  Which speaks volumes about how strong the franchise has become in very little time.  They're what all future expansion teams will strive to be.  For good reason, too.