The first-year Las Vegas Golden Knights are in the Stanley Cup Finals. Teddy Cutler predicted they’d have a lousy season.
Nearly a year ago—on June 22, 2017, to be exact—Newsweek’s Teddy Cutler wrote an article he wished he hadn’t. The headline tells why: VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS ARE GOING TO SUCK IN 2017-18 AND HERE’S WHY.
Oh, MY!
On Monday night, those same Golden Knights will play in the Stanley Cup Finals. And the Knights are favored to win.
A year ago, Cutler couldn’t imagine it happening. There was a good reason why. “The recent history of NHL expansion shows us that the first season in the league is always brutal for new franchises,” Cutler wrote.
Cutler made his case by chronicling how first-year NHL franchises have fared over the past 25+ years. What he showed wasn’t pretty.
1991: San Jose Sharks (finished last)
1992: Ottawa Senators (won only 10 games)
1992: Tampa Bay Lightning (finished last)
1993: Florida Panthers (finished 5th)
1993: Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (not bad, 33 wins and 4th place finish)
1998: Nashville Predators (finished last, but made the playoffs and nearly made the Stanley finals. (Hint, Teddy….)
1999: Atlanta Thrashers (last place with 14 wins)
2000: Columbus Blue Jackets (finished last)
2000: Minnesota Wild (5th place)
Can you blame Cutler? Probably not. His prediction seemed to like a safe bet. But that’s the thing about sports: you never really know what’s going to happen when action begins. And what Vegas has done is extraordinary. Make that miraculous. A 500-1 shot at season’s start, the Knights have won big this year with players and a head coach other teams discarded.
In fact, no team in NHL history has accomplished what the Golden Knights have done. The 1968 expansion St. Louis Blues made the Finals, but that was in a year when (as crazy as it sounds) all NHL expansion teams were in the same division.
Courtesy: Twitter
What’s more, the final script hasn’t been written for these Knights, including the possibility that they’ll walk away with Lord Stanley’s Cup. And that’s exactly what Vegas houses are predicting. The Knights are the prohibitive favorite to win the Cup. One reason is the team’s home record – 6-1 in the playoffs so far – and the Knights have home ice advantage in the Finals.
They’ll face a long-suffering Washington Capitals’ team that has fans in Washington abuzz. One reason is that local hero, Alex Ovechkin, who has played in over 1100 NHL games, is finally going to the NHL Finals.
The combo of these upstart Knights vs. those also-ran Caps makes this year’s match-up intriguing … so much so that it’s likely to capture public fancy, including those who would otherwise pay little or no attention to pro hockey. People love the improbable—the unimaginable even more—and this Cup battle has both.
While more eyeballs are just what the NHL needs on the business side of things, the circumstance this year raises puzzling questions about the game itself. The system is set up against fledgling teams. Success is supposed to be earned after years of struggle. Right?
Well…. Consider this recent tongue-in-cheek tweet from the Knights’ PR department:
Vegas Golden Knights @GoldenKnights — ON THIS DATE IN GOLDEN KNIGHTS HISTORY….. Actually, not much happened. We didn’t have a team yet. Probably just had some meetings 11:09 AM – 19 May 2018
Is 2017-18 a one-off or is something else going on? You can bet that hockey’s brain trust is already grappling with that question.
The Knights, on the other hand, face a different challenge. What do they do for an encore? Indeed, will there be an encore? Or will this be like the Cinderella team in March Madness that’s rarely, if ever, heard from again? The 2005-06 George Mason team comes to mind.
But, no matter how this turns out, the Golden Knights are a fascinating story.
What do you think now, Teddy Cutler?
