In just their sixth season since joining the NHL as an expansion team, the Vegas Golden Knights won their first Stanley Cup on Tuesday, defeating the Florida Panthers.
They aced their expansion draft. They were aggressive about improvement. Then they stumbled out of the playoff sandbox just one year ago.
And now they’re champions.
On Tuesday, the Vegas Golden Knights defeated the Florida Panthers 9-3 to win the 2023 Stanley Cup in front of their rapturous fans in T-Mobile Arena, right on the Las Vegas Strip.
It’s a stunning success story for an expansion team in just its sixth year of existence — and whose owner, Bill Foley, was roundly ridiculed for talking about a quick run to a title when he ponied up his $500 million expansion fee ahead of his team’s debut in the 2017-18 season.
The Buffalo Sabres currently hold the NHL’s longest playoff drought, at 12 years. They joined the league as an expansion team in 1970 — and have never won a Stanley Cup. Now, the Golden Knights have made it to the top of the mountain in just their sixth season of operation.
“Bill Foley had the vision, the creativity and the audacity to bring the first major-league team to Las Vegas,” said NHL commissioner Gary Bettman as he prepared to present the Stanley Cup to Golden Knights captain Mark Stone following Tuesday’s game. “And then he said, ‘We’re going to win the Stanley Cup in six years.’”
“What’s happened here has been simply incredible,” Bettman added. “Not only is Vegas a hockey town, it’s a championship town.”
Stone is the only captain of Vegas’s brief history, wearing the ‘C’ for the last three seasons. When he was dealt to the Golden Knights at the 2019 trade deadline, he was reunited with his junior hockey owner and general manager from the WHL’s Brandon Wheat Kings, now-Vegas GM Kelly McCrimmon.
After posing for a photo with Bettman and the trophy, 31-year-old Stone hoisted it aloft, per tradition. Then, the next six players to take their turns with the Cup were the six original Golden Misfits who were selected in the 2017 expansion draft and are still on the roster — Reilly Smith, Jonathan Marchessault, William Karlsson, Brayden McNabb, Shea Theodore and William Carrier.
