Vegas Golden Knights win the Stanley Cup

The NHL has a new Stanley Cup winner. He was determined in Game 5 of the final series, in which the Vegas Golden Knights defeated the Florida Panthers surprisingly easily – 9-3 – on their court and for the first time in their very short history, which began only six years ago, won the league’s main prize. The main factor that ensured his victory was, perhaps, not the brightest, but insanely even and hardworking line-up with the Russian forward Ivan Barbashev who ideally fit into it.

The point of this Vegas triumph is not difficult to succinctly articulate. It turned out to be, apparently, the most convincing evidence that in today’s NHL, with its unsteady hierarchy, everything is possible, and any dreams, any projects in it can come true if you choose the right strategy and strictly follow it.

Vegas entered the NHL in 2017. And at its core there are still five hockey players who played for the club in their debut season. And, as it turned out, all of them – Jonathan Marchesseau, Reilly Smith, William Karlsson, Shea Theodore, Braden McNabb – perfectly remember the phrase said by Vegas owner Bill Foley before the start of that championship. They repeated it with pleasure, this short phrase, this slogan that seemed to be pure populism. And Foley himself, in the middle of the holiday at the T-Mobile Arena, with pleasure, with a wide smile, said it again to reporters, returning to 2017. “Cup in six” – “Cup in six years”: he then gave his freshly molded team an installation that, of course, got into the newspapers and over which it was customary to laugh. Sounds biting, but where is the slogan and where is the reality?

In the NHL, before Vegas, there were clubs that managed to get to the Stanley Cup six years after joining the league or even faster. He is the seventh in a row.

But five of his predecessors have played in the NHL since time immemorial – in the 1920s or a little earlier. And in modern history there is only one example. The Edmonton Oilers won their first Stanley Cup in 1984, their fifth season in the league. But, strictly speaking, Edmonton was a young club only formally. The fact is that before the NHL, he played for a long time in the World Hockey Association, which tried to compete with it, before falling apart, and, while still a member, managed, say, to intercept the main Canadian hockey genius of all time, Wayne Gretzky, who became a key element of takeoff. The Vegas experiment is an order of magnitude cleaner.

Bill Foley, despite his stellar business record and reputation for having a flair for non-obvious investments, was actually suspected of being crazy when he first completed the Vegas purchase. Paying the NHL just $500 million for the right to a franchise and locating it in a city that doesn’t really have a shortage of entertainment and never really dreamed about hockey, the game of the north, was already a colossal risk. And the statement about the sprint breakthrough to the Stanley Cup was completely delusional.

His Wayne Gretzky “Vegas” could not pull out with all the desire. He had to be completed mainly through the so-called expansion draft.

On it, three dozen other clubs protected the hockey players they especially needed from the transition and did not protect them, giving the opportunity to take someone to a newcomer who was not particularly needed. Serednyachkov.

It was fantastic that Vegas, barely assembled from them, immediately gained popularity with the public, as Foley wanted, and in addition immediately managed to slip into the play-off finals, in which, however, Washington Capitals lost without options and Alexander Ovechkin. Already this breakthrough proved that there was nothing really crazy in the plans of the owner of the club. The current NHL, with its curbing salary cap and the constant migration of strong players, presents a great opportunity for everyone. You just need to know how to use them, which, however, is not so simple.

Bill Foley’s “Bowl in Six Years” setting, stuck in the minds of many, has supplanted another. Although, most likely, it is much more important for understanding why Vegas managed to complete the installation. He gave clear instructions to his managers and scouts: form the basis, take only players “team”, “low ego” and at least relatively cheap. For the NHL, this was actually a violation of the basic principle that a team should be built, whatever one may say, around a star, or preferably stars. Vegas, on the other hand, ignored him, strictly adhering to the once formulated strategy.

In accordance with it, all that five old-timers, guardsmen, who caught the club’s debut in the NHL, got into it. One of them, written off before the expansion draft, was, ironically, by Florida forward Jonathan Marchesseau, who scored a damn dozen goals in this playoff and earned the prize for his most valuable player. In accordance with it, in the fall of 2021, Vegas took center forward Jack Eichel from the Buffalo Sabers, taking a big risk because he underwent a serious operation on the cervical spine, and his former club suspected that she would put an end to the player’s career. With 26 points in the play-offs, Eichel led his scoring race. In accordance with this strategy, Vegas signed defensemen Alex Pietrangelo and Alec Martinez, forward Mark Stone, paying attention not primarily to their flashiness, but to their usefulness. In accordance with this strategy, he hired Bruce Cassidy, who was fired from the Boston Bruins, as a coach, who likes to put hockey in a collective, tough, with important tasks for all four links. In accordance with this strategy, already this year, before the end of the regular season, he, strengthening under the playoffs, traded Russian Ivan Barbashev from the St. Louis Blues – not so noticeable, but distinguished by amazing diligence and universalism, and in this sense ideal meeting the needs and philosophy of the team.

Barbashev, with 18 points in 22 games, entered the top ten in the playoffs, being a shot at the bull’s-eye. Although, it must be said, there are very few personnel mistakes in Vegas, in principle.

The result is a club that wins not by the gloss and talent of individual characters, but by evenness, depth, guaranteeing the highest density of struggle and resistance. A club that doesn’t give a damn about a fresh misfire (in 2022, it was left without a cup stage) and current problems like a goalkeeper: during the season, it used half a dozen goalkeepers, and Edin Hill found himself in the role of the first number in the decisive rounds of the playoffs by accident, due to partner injury. All problems are compensated by the overall strength and stability, or something.

Such a Vegas was in the final much more powerful than the classical one in terms of structure, with clear leaders in the face of goalkeeper Sergei Bobrovsky and striker Matthew Tkachak of Florida. It is significant that in the fifth match without Tkachak, who was out of action due to a fracture of the sternum, she completely fell apart, laying out the red carpet for the opponent to the Stanley Cup, winning which, of course, does not mean that Vegas is doomed to qualify for the next season. trophy. And the same ESPN, talking about his rapid breakthrough, of course, could not help but point out that, according to CapFriendly, the real payroll of the club at the time of the holiday was more than $96 million. And in order to comply with the salary cap set at $82.5 million , he, despite the strategic bet on savings, still had to resort to tricks like putting some players on the long-term injured list during the regular championship.

Having won the Stanley Cup, it is doubly difficult to stay within the ceiling: the heroes have a habit of demanding a raise in their salaries. And if they can’t raise it, competitors who have kept a reserve under the ceiling are at hand, who also know that everything is possible in today’s NHL.

Alexey Dospekhov