The Vegas Golden Knights have a rather dubious reputation. Arguably the most hated team in the NHL, but why?
- According to a study, the Vegas Golden Knights are the most hated team in the NHL.
- The body of the Golden Knights was built “around bribes”.
- There are harsh legends about the way the club operates.
The NHL experienced a new era in the fall of 2017, when the series expanded to the Nevada desert, the cradle of sin, i.e. Las Vegas.
The Vegas Golden Knights were the first big professional club to start playing their home games in the casino city’s corners.
Since then, the NFL, i.e. the first league of American football, has landed in Vegas in the same way. Next on the list are MLB (baseball) and NBA (basketball).
However, the Golden Knights were the team that paved the way for others.
The club’s story began in a tragic way, when in the fall of 2017, the worst mass shooting in US history took place in the city, in which a total of 61 people died (including the dead shooter).
In such tragic circumstances, the legend of the Golden Knights began. PDO
Tragedy united the city, and its fresh pride, the Golden Knights, gave it faith.
Less than ten years later, the image of the Golden Knights is very different.
– The Golden Knights is not even a ten-year-old club and yet it can be said that it is the most hated team in the NHL in the opinion of hockey fans, editor of USA Today Mary Clarke write.
Also, according to a poll commissioned by the American Rotowire, the Golden Knights are really the most hated team in the NHL.
But for what? Why has the club, which is still thought of as new, reached the top of the hate list in a short period of time?
There are several reasons.
The golden spoon effect
In autumn 2017, the Vegas Golden Knights joined the NHL as a new club. PDO
According to a survey commissioned by Rotowire, the biggest anger stems from the club’s success.
The Golden Knights have won the Pacific Division a total of six times in nine seasons in their club history. It has reached the Stanley Cup finals three times and won the championship once. In addition to this, it has participated in the finals of the NHL’s Western Conference a total of five times.
In the opinion of many fans, the Golden Knights entered the series with a golden spoon in their mouth, at least when compared to how the expansion teams that preceded it fared in their debut seasons.
The harshest example can be found in 1974–75, when the NHL’s new expansion team, the Washington Capitals, dragged through the season with a dismal record of 8–67–5 (wins, losses, tie points). Its goal difference was 265 hits below zero.
The Kansas City Scouts, who joined the series at the same time as the Capitals, did not fare much better (15–54–11).
In the fall of 1992, the expansion team Ottawa Senators lost no less than 74 games (10–70–4) in their debut season.
The NHL has tried to ensure that the expansion teams would not immediately become a laughingstock. The NHL has changed the rules of the so-called expansion reservation events several times to a new faith.
Back in 1974 and 1979, the teams of the series at that time could protect two goalkeepers and a total of 15 field players.
In the expansion reservations of the Vegas Golden Knights and the NHL’s newest team, the Seattle Kraken, the current teams could no longer protect either one goalie, three defenders and seven forwards or a total of eight field players.
Hard searches
Marked as a surplus man, Marc-Andre Fleury became a fan-worshipped key player in Vegas. PDO
In the case of Vegas, the biggest difference compared to previous expansion teams was on the salary cap side. Even before, the clubs were free to secure their best players, but now the salary cap, which was quite low, posed additional challenges for the clubs.
The Golden Knights benefited from this when several NHL club owners “bribed” it to take certain pre-selected players. In retrospect, these deals did not go very well from the perspective of other clubs.
Among other things, the NHL’s successful club of the 2010s, the Pittsburgh Penguins, gave the Golden Knights a second-round reserve right, so that the Knights could take goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury off their payroll during the expansion. Be that as it may, Fleury became the driving force of the Golden Knights, when the club advanced to the NHL finals in its first season.
The Florida Panthers, on the other hand, gave forward Reilly Smith and a fourth-round pick so that the Golden Knights could pick up forward Jonathan Marchessault in the expansion trade.
Marchessault eventually played for seven seasons in Vegas, winning, among other things, the title of the most valuable player of the NHL playoffs.
The Anaheim Ducks pledged defenseman Shea Theodore to the Golden Knights on the condition that the Vegas club pick up defenseman Clayton Stoner in the expansion trade. Today, the 30-year-old Theodore is still one of the Golden Knights’ leading profile defenders.
Shea Theodore has been the number one defenseman for the Vegas Golden Knights throughout the club’s history. PDO
The Columbus Blue Jackets moved their first- and second-round draft picks and the contract of forward David Clarkson in order for the Golden Knights to select Swedish center William Karlsson in the expansion draft.
Karlsson is still the driving force of the Golden Knights.
The structure of the Golden Knights began to be built around the bribes given by other clubs. Thus, the claim that the Golden Knights entered the league with a golden spoon in their mouth is partly wrong.
The spoon was shoved into its mouth by the NHL’s skilled club bosses.
Questionable actions
The Golden Knights have become the most hated team in the NHL also because the old number one target of hatred, the Toronto Maple Leafs, has mostly turned into a miserable perennial loser. The Leafs try to pump whatever additions they can around their golden face Auston Matthews year after year without winning anything.
And the NHL doesn’t know how to hate the Washington Capitals, personified by Aleksandr Ovechkin, because the United States clearly does not properly understand what a war crime means. Or, in its simplicity, they don’t care about what happens on the edges of Europe.
Ovechkin, a close supporter of Vladimir Putin, is being praised while the forces ordered by Putin are killing civilians in Ukraine.
But the Vegas Golden Knights have also given themselves reasons for anger. Among other things, it has acted in a questionable way when one of its players has been traded elsewhere.
An example is Marc-Andre Fleury, who found out about his player trade through the social media service Twitter.
There is also a claim circulating on the Internet that Finnish striker Erik Haula found out about his player trade at the point when his access card no longer worked at the Golden Knights’ premises.
Erik Haula played in Vegas until the doors stopped opening. PDO
Recently, the Golden Knights have been in the headlines for preventing various clubs from interviewing former head coach Bruce Cassidy.
According to suspicions, the Golden Knights might even have leaked the information themselves that the Edmonton Oilers were targeting Cassidy as their new captain. The information surfaced at a time when the Oilers had not fired their head coach at the time, Kris Knoblauch.
The Golden Knights were heavily fined in this spring’s playoffs when they didn’t open their locker room to the media after the game, and head coach John Tortorella didn’t share any public comments.
The NHL fined Golden Knights head coach Tortorella $100,000, and the club will also lose its second-round booking rights.
Many kinds of stories fit into the history of a club that is less than ten years old.