What can the Red Wings learn from the 2023 Stanley Cup Champion Golden Knights?

On Tuesday night at T-Mobile Arena, the Vegas Golden Knights clinched the Stanley Cup in just their sixth season of existence.  They did so in dominating fashion, lighting up the Florida Panthers to the tune of a 9-3 scoreline.

Trying to scour the Cup champion for secrets to the pinnacle of the league is an annual offseason tradition and a perilous one. At a basic level, the idea that there is only one way to win a Cup strikes me as a fallacy, and the odds that you would successfully identify the defining traits of any one winner and then replicate them within your own organization. It also appears that most organizations are ready to take away the conclusion “we need to get bigger and more physical” regardless of who comes away with the trophy.

Still, this Vegas team, which rolled through the postseason without having to play in a Game 7, is so dominant that it’s at least worth considering their process of assembly and self-discovery. This wasn’t a champion that closed its eyes and hung on to survive the traditional playoff war of attrition.  They were in command of every series they played. 

How did president of hockey operations George McPhee and GM Kelly McCrimmon assemble such a monstrous roster, and what, if anything, of that formula might the Red Wings be able to adapt to their own pursuit of Lord Stanley?

Unquenchable Thirst for Stars & a Decided Lack of Sentimentality

The defining feature of McPhee and McCrimmon’s tenure with the Golden Knights has been their apparent interest in every star player who comes available, whether via trade or free agency. The original ‘17-18 Golden Misfits couldn’t be a team with true star power; legitimate prime-of-career stars aren’t going to be available in an expansion draft, and they’re seldom available in free agency. After their improbable inaugural run to the Cup Final, McPhee and McCrimmon set about rectifying that deficiency.

In a league where most teams allow themselves to be hamstrung by the salary cup and a lack of creativity at the executive level, McPhee and McCrimmon have engaged in a relentless pursuit of superstar talent. This approach has come at a cost: With numerous valuable players and fan favorites shipped off at bargain prices.  But the end result is inarguable.

At their first ever trade deadline, Vegas acquired Tomas Tatar from Detroit for the exorbitant price of a first-, a second-, and a third-round pick. Seven months later, the Knights shipped Tatar, a second rounder, and Nick Suzuki (whom they had selected with the first draft pick in franchise history) to Montreal in exchange for Max Pacioretty. After four productive if injury-plagued seasons, Pacioretty was sent to Carolina for “future considerations.”

This series of transactions was Vegas’ process in miniature: Liberal in talent identification and acquisition, cold-blooded in assessing which pieces were worth holding onto.

The first trade coup of the McPhee-McCrimmon regime came at the '19 deadline. The Knights pried Mark Stone from Ottawa at the 2019 trade deadline for a second round pick, Oscar Lindberg, and prized defensive prospect Erik Bransstrom (whom Vegas had selected with its second ever draft pick). Stone would go on to become the first captain in franchise history. In Tuesday’s Game 5, he became the third player ever to score a hat trick in a Stanley Cup clinching game. His relentlessness as a forechecker and knack for thievery fit perfectly into the Knights’ brand of hockey, and Stone solidified his status amongst the NHL’s elite wingers and defensive forwards.

The high water mark of Vegas’ calloused approach to player movement came in the summer of 2021 when the Knights jettisoned goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury for minor league forward Mikael Hakkarainen. Vegas waived Hakkarainen that August, and he would never play another professional game in North America. Fleury was the most beloved player in the history of the fledgling franchise and, though he was comfortably on the wrong side of thirty, he was also fresh off winning the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s top goaltender.

The chief reason the Knights had to offload Fleury’s contract was their desire to acquire still more elite talent. In the 2020 offseason (which came in October instead of the summer due to the COVID shutdown), the Knights inked Alex Pietrangelo to a seven-year, $61.6 million contract. At the time, a top-tier, thirty-minutes-a-night defenseman probably wasn’t Vegas’ biggest roster need, but Pietrangelo was the best free agent available, so he was the one McPhee and McCrimmon had to have.

A few months after trading Fleury, the Knights leveraged their extra cap space (and some creative long-term injured reserve accounting) into another star, perhaps the biggest acquisition of them all in Jack Eichel. 

Eichel was a legitimate franchise center in his mid-twenties, the kind of player you would expect to be laughed at for even proposing a trade to bring in. But, an interminable rebuild and the Sabres’ reticence at Eichel’s preferred remedy for a nagging back injury meant that he wanted out of Buffalo. The Sabres’ return (Alex Tuch, Peyton Krebs, and first- and second-round draft picks) looks decent in retrospect considering the circumstances. The Knights, meanwhile, added a player with a singular blend of speed and skill that would recover beautifully from his disc-replacement operation and become the top scorer of the 2023 postseason.

To what extent can Detroit follow that script? 

It’s difficult to say precisely, but we can see at least hints of something similar. In dealing Tyler Bertuzzi at the deadline (rather than extend him), the Red Wings were anything but sentimental. Yes, Bertuzzi was a fan-favorite and close friend of captain Dylan Larkin, but an extension would have been costly and tied Detroit to a player with a fairly extensive injury history. Steve Yzerman made a cold and calculated decision that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.

As for hunting down stars, that’s been a trickier process. Detroit was an active free agent player a summer ago, and while that haul wasn’t exactly star-laden, it did signal a desire to prioritize acquiring talent that could immediately contribute to winning at the NHL level. 

One issue the Wings face in this regard is that, despite the possibility of being whisked out as hastily as you were ushered in, Vegas has been one of the league’s most popular destinations with players since the Knights’ inception. In the aughts, Detroit was a place where NHL players often took a discount to play, but, unfortunately, that is no longer the case, making it all the trickier to lure in top-end talent.

The more positive spin for Detroit is that McPhee and McCrimmon’s wheelings and dealings to assemble the Knights offer proof that quality, top-of-the-lineup players do come available in ways other than the draft lottery.

Eichel is the best example of this, and, to be sure, his case is unique. It seems unlikely that another franchise centerman will find himself in the middle of a medical standoff on the heels of an interminable rebuild and require a change in scenery. There certainly isn’t a timeline for predicting when that might recur. Still, the fact remains that seldom as the prime-of-his-career superstar might spring loose, it isn’t as though this never happens.

And this is the NHL, there is no shortage of dysfunctional franchises from which a young star might want to distance themself. When Vegas needed more punch at the head of its forward group, they found Mark Stone, whom Ottawa appeared to have no intention of signing to the contract extension he deserved. When they needed better shooting talent, Pacioretty was ready to move on from the weight of the Montreal captaincy and his aging curve did not appear to align with the Habs’ window for Cup contention. By acquiring Pietrangelo, the Knights doubled down on a strength, transforming their D-corps from good to dominant.

Detroit won’t get the chance to poach the likes of Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith via an expansion draft, but it won’t be long before another franchise moves on from players without realizing just how good they are or could become.

So, in looking at Vegas’ path to the top of the league, the best news for Red Wings fans is that the Knights prove elite talent can be found outside the top few slots in the draft if you are only aggressive in pursuit of it.

Depth > Stars & Scrubs

I realize with these first two lessons I’m essentially saying that Detroit could learn from the Knights to go acquire lots of stars but also pursue quality depth, which doesn’t sound like the most insightful observation, but bear with me.

Over the last decade or so, the NHL’s salary cap has fed the idea that the most efficient allocation of a team’s resources is to lock down its star talent (even at an unseemly AAV), supplementing those stars with whatever it can afford, probably low-cost veterans or players on entry-level deals. The theory (at least in part inspired by the altogether more interesting offseason structure of the NBA) dictated that stars are scarcer than anything else and should be prioritized, while the difference between depth players around the league is less significant.

No team seemed to embody this more than Vegas, who treated picks and prospects like novelty koozies at a minor league baseball game and was perpetually enamored with everything shiny and new.

In the 2021 playoffs, that brand of team building crashed and burned against an upstart Canadiens team. This was an aberrant postseason at the conclusion of the regular season impacted most by COVID, but it was hard to escape the conclusion that Vegas was suffering from insufficient depth. Mark Stone appeared overburdened, the Knights struggled to finish, and a number of the key contributors from this year’s team (Keegan Kolesar, Nicolas Roy, Nic Hague) were still developing.

Vegas couldn’t just go big game hunting on the open market; they needed to acquire and successfully incorporate quality depth as well. The Knights had grabbed Chandler Stephenson in December 2019 for the laughable fee of a 2021 fifth rounder.

At the time, he was a fringe winger in Washington struggling for ice time. In Vegas, he turned into the perfect running mate for Stone, eventually proving a credible top six center. 

With his exemplary skating and puck carrier, Stephenson could salve Stone’s lone weakness, a lack of footspeed. Stone could grab a turnover, Stephenson could lug it up ice, then dish it to Pacioretty for a shot. With Pacioretty out of the fold, Stephenson took his game to another level this spring by scoring an astonishing ten playoff goals. He arrived in Vegas for almost nothing, founds himself in a position to succeed between Stone and Pacioretty, and steadily grew his own game from that advantageous perch.

At this year’s trade deadline, Vegas’ prime acquisition wasn’t a glamorous one. Ivan Barbashev arrived from St. Louis as a depth winger at significant cost (2021 first-round selection Zach Dean), but the Knights anticipated that it was worth paying. With a Cup-contending roster, it made sense to sacrifice futures to maximize every last slot in the lineup.

The end result of all their maneuvering and tinkering is a Knights lineup with three credible scoring lines and a painful-to-play-against fourth, backed up by a deep stable of capable defensemen. 

That loaded crop of forwards can only perform as well as the service they get from their defense, and, especially in a playoff series, your weakest link on the back end will be tested. Up front, the Knights could survive an off night from one line, while the others picked up the slack (e.g. Marchessault went the entire first round without scoring a goal, and Vegas still bested Winnipeg in five). Vegas had quality in every position; it wasn’t just that players had roles but that they could perform those roles well.

Steve Yzerman clearly prized depth in his contributions to Tampa’s Cup-winning teams, and that will have to be the model for Detroit to get back to the promised land as well.

Size, Size, Size

As I noted at the top, NHL GMs never seem to need much convincing to ascribe a premium to size, but it’s impossible to ignore as an essential component of Vegas’ success.

The intensity and officiating of playoff hockey privilege the large and mighty, especially to control the slot at either end of the rink. 

Depending on how your team fares, watching playoff hockey can be maddening or delightful in the way it often doesn’t seem to matter how well your team plays, so long as it controls the high danger chances. If you box out well around your goaltender and create some chaos and quality looks around the opposite crease, you can get caved in terms of field position and possession but still survive. Paramount though they are in dictating results, high-danger chances are a vanishingly small percentage of the action of a sixty-minute game. Being big isn’t the only way to control the net, but it’s an awfully good one.

There is of course one exception to the supremacy of size for Vegas: Marchessault, the only Golden Knight under six-feet tall to play in the Cup Final. Considering he won the Conn Smythe, it’s a notable one. Still, the preponderance of size up and down the Knights' lineup is undeniable.

Of course, just being big isn’t enough to accomplish much of anything. Look at Vegas’ blue line. More than anything, the Knights’ D-corps is effective. Alex Pietrangelo was a star in St. Louis, but that phase of his career is over, even if he remains a strong performer. Shea Theodore is an outstanding modern puck-mover, but beyond that, the Knights’ defenders are more functional than starring. They clean up messes around the net and snap stretch passes with aplomb to their talented crop of forwards.

On aggregate, we’ve seen Steve Yzerman show a predilection for size, especially on the blue line. Whether at the draft (Moritz Seider & Simon Edvinsson) or in free agency (Ben Chiarot and Olli Maata), Yzerman has targeted defenseman of head-turning physical stature. To rule out any undersized players would be a fool’s errand and self-defeating, but it’s hard to watch an NHL playoff game without concluding that size is a definitive advantage.