Only two teams won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in the Salary Cap Era. Carol Schram compares those clubs to the Vegas Golden Knights to see if they have the makings to be the third.
Whether or not you subscribe to the belief that the Stanley Cup is the toughest trophy to win in all of pro sports, it's certainly true that earning an NHL championship is no walk in the park.
This spring, the Vegas Golden Knights set a new standard for modern expansion when they won their first title in just their sixth season of existence. That's one year longer than it took the NHL Edmonton Oilers, but that was a bit of a different circumstance: they were a pre-existing WHA team that merged into the league in 1979 with some key pieces in place, including coach Glen Sather and an 18-year-old scoring prodigy by the name of Wayne Gretzky.
The Golden Knights started right from scratch. And while their expansion draft terms were much more favorable than the teams that joined the league during the 1990s, perhaps the greatest gift of all was that blank salary-cap slate, which has now also been used effectively by the Seattle Kraken.
Vegas also arrived on the NHL scene with unprecedented audacity. From the beginning, owner Bill Foley made lofty proclamations about playoff spots and Cup wins. Then, the 'Golden Misfits' dared to reach the Stanley Cup final in their very first season. And in subsequent years, the brain trust of George McPhee and Kelly McCrimmon has shown they'll stop at nothing to keep upgrading their organization.
Their vision produced three trips to the final four in their first four seasons, then one injury-plagued nightmare year before Bruce Cassidy arrived behind the bench. This spring, all the stars aligned, and the Golden Knights became the 26th different franchise to win the Stanley Cup since 1917-18.
Winning once is hard. Going back-to-back is almost unfathomable, especially in today's 32-team, cap-constrained environment.
The Tampa Bay Lightning defied the odds and overcame all the challenges of the pandemic to go back-to-back in 2020 and 2021. Before that, the only other team in the Salary Cap Era that repeated was the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017.
Let's look at the path that the Penguins and Lightning took to their repeat titles and see where the Golden Knights sit by comparison.
The Penguins' Wins: 2016 and 2017
After Sidney Crosby arrived in 2005, the Penguins became perennial playoff contenders and won a championship in 2009. But the team took a dip in the 2014-15 season, falling to fourth place in the Metropolitan Division with 98 points and winning just one game in a first-round loss to the New York Rangers.
On Dec. 12, 2015, with a record of 15-10-3, the Penguins fired Mike Johnston midway through his second season behind the bench. They promoted Mike Sullivan from their AHL affiliate.
The fresh coaching voice was a hit. The Penguins posted the league's fifth-best points percentage for the rest of the season on their way to a record of 33-16-5, then steamrolled the Rangers in five games before taking down Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals and the defending finalists from Tampa Bay. In the Stanley Cup final, they bested the San Jose Sharks in six games.
Crosby earned the Conn Smythe Trophy honors, and Jim Rutherford received the GM of the year award for a series of savvy moves that included creating the new 'HBK Line': Carl Hagelin, Nick Bonino and Phil Kessel.
After their summer of celebration, the Penguins returned with most of their lineup intact. Veteran center Matt Cullen opted to return with his 40th birthday on the horizon in November, so Pittsburgh's most significant departure was depth defenseman Ben Lovejoy, who signed as a free agent with the New Jersey Devils.
The newly formed goalie tandem of Marc-Andre Fleury and Matt Murray also returned. And despite a herniated disc that kept key defenseman Kris Letang on the sidelines for the playoffs, the Penguins dispatched the Columbus Blue Jackets before surviving seven-game scares against Washington and Ottawa. In the Stanley Cup final, they took down the Nashville Predators as Crosby claimed his second straight Conn Smythe.
The Lightning Wins: 2020 and 2021
The Lightning were knocking at the door for several years before they finally broke through. Under Jon Cooper, they became playoff regulars, made that trip to the final in 2015, and posted their 128-point regular season in 2018-19 — which went up in smoke in their first-round playoff sweep at the hands of the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Perhaps the sting of that early exit gave the Lightning some extra motivation. They won their 2020 championship following a most challenging and unique post-season — first, a three-and-a-half month pandemic break served largely in isolation, then playoff games in fan-free bubbles.
Despite the absence of injured captain Steven Stamkos for all but one game, the Lightning would not be denied. In the Toronto bubble, they took down Columbus and Boston in five games each. In Edmonton, it took six games to knock out both the New York Islanders and the Dallas Stars. Victor Hedman was the Conn Smythe Trophy winner.
Then, the waiting game resumed. In the end, it was another three-and-a-half month break followed by a 56-game, all-divisional regular season — and a different divisional alignment, with international border restrictions in place.
In a flat-cap world, third-year GM Julien BriseBois had to use every trick in the book to keep his group compliant. Yes, Nikita Kucherov needed hip surgery, but it didn't hurt that the rehab kept him on the shelf for the entire regular season and funnelled his $9.5-million cap hit to long-term injured reserve. Brisebois also acquired the contracts of Marian Gaborik and Anders Nilsson to augment his LTIR pool further, and that gave him enough space to sign key RFAs Mikhail Sergachev, Erik Cernak and Anthony Cirelli to new deals.
BriseBois was also able to retain impending UFAs Pat Maroon, Luke Schenn and Jan Rutta but was forced to trade RFA forward Mitchell Stephens. He also let three impending UFAs move on: defensemen Kevin Shattenkirk and Zach Bogosian — who returned in 2021-22 after one year with the Toronto Maple Leafs — and forward Carter Verhaeghe, who has now blossomed into a 42-goal scorer and clutch playoff performer with the Florida Panthers.
The 2021 playoffs began with Kucherov's return and an exciting six-game first-round series against Florida. Following that was a five-game dismantling of the Carolina Hurricanes and a nail-biting seven-gamer against the New York Islanders in the swan song for Nassau Coliseum. The Stanley Cup final was a relative cakewalk against the Montreal Canadiens — a five-game series that ultimately allowed the Lightning to enjoy a very different celebration the second time, in front of their family and friends at Amalie Arena.
Knight Time
The Golden Knights have also teetered on the knife's edge of salary cap compliance for years. Last season, they used nearly $14 million in LTIR space, according to PuckPedia, the most since the Lightning's $17.3 million in the 2020-21 season.
Remarkably, it looks like they're in pretty good shape for next year — as long as Robin Lehner and his $5-million cap hit remain on LTIR following the hip surgery that kept him out for the entire 2022-23 season.
In his place between the pipes, playoff hero Adin Hill is the proud owner of the best contract of his career, two years at $4.9 million per year. Logan Thompson also remains in the fold at $766,666.
McCrimmon's only other significant roster move this off-season was the decision to trade original 'Misfit' Reilly Smith to Pittsburgh for a draft pick, then assign that $5-million cap hit instead to trade-deadline pickup Ivan Barbashev.
Like with Pittsburgh, a new coach came in just before the Cup win, so Bruce Cassidy should continue to have the ear of his players next season.
And like Tampa, Vegas has one big injury question mark in its quest to repeat. Mark Stone returned from mid-season back surgery to dress for every playoff game and raise his game as the stakes got higher: nine of his 24 playoff points came against Florida in the Stanley Cup final.
Even if his back continues to be an issue, expect the captain, Stone, to find ways to be a difference-maker for the Golden Knights when it matters most.