Golden Knights Aim for Second Championship and Expansion Franchise Legacy

The line for the Golden Knights’ practice on Monday morning snaked well outside the rink, a testament to the fervent support from Vegas fans who have celebrated their team’s successes over the past nine seasons. Now back in the Stanley Cup Final for the third time, the Golden Knights are just two victories away from securing their second championship in four years.

As they prepare to face the Carolina Hurricanes, who are looking to even the series at 2-2 and reclaim home-ice advantage, a win for the Golden Knights would place them in a commanding position. Hockey historian Eric Zweig notes that the Golden Knights are already in the conversation as one of the best expansion franchises in NHL history, with another Stanley Cup potentially solidifying their legacy.

“It’s hard to compare,” Zweig said. “Frankly, in a 32-team league — I guess it was only 31 when they started — anything you do now is harder than it had to have been before. It just is. There’s so many more rounds of playoffs to go through. There’s so many more teams that you have to be better than to get there.”

The Golden Knights boast a locker room filled with players who have lifted the Stanley Cup, and their experience is invaluable as they edge closer to their ultimate goal. Forward Brett Howden, who leads the playoffs with 13 goals, emphasized the significance of their collective experience. “I think it goes a long way,” he said. “Just the experience that we have in this locker room, the leadership, the way we’ve gone through adversity, the way our team stays composed. It just speaks volumes to our locker room.”

While Howden is part of the 2023 championship team, several players are still on the hunt for their first title, including Mitch Marner, Rasmus Andersson, and Tomas Hertl. Hertl, who reached the Cup Final with San Jose in 2016 only to lose to Pittsburgh, reflected on the journey. “In the third season when I got to the Cup, I was like, ‘I’ll be right back,’” he said. “You have a couple of good runs. You have a couple of years missing the playoffs. You’re like, ‘Will it ever come again?’ You come here and it’s a great team in the first two seasons. We’ve been in the playoffs, but we never get far. And now we’re sitting there, we have two wins to the Cup Final. Hopefully, we finish this the right way and it will be remembered forever.”

Zweig believes that the Golden Knights already belong alongside legendary franchises like the Flyers, Islanders, and Oilers. The Flyers, who entered the league in 1967-68, made the playoffs in their first two seasons and won the Cup in 1974 and 1975. The Islanders began their run in 1972-73 and clinched four consecutive Cups starting in 1980. Meanwhile, the Oilers, led by Wayne Gretzky, made the postseason in each of their first 13 years in the NHL and captured five Cups over seven seasons.

While the Golden Knights are aware of their place in history, their focus remains on navigating a high-scoring series against the Hurricanes that has been marked by dramatic momentum shifts. Despite the potential for being down 2-1 or even 3-0, they displayed resilience, overcoming an early two-goal deficit in Game 1 and surviving a double-overtime thriller in Game 3 after blowing a four-goal lead.

“There was no panic,” coach John Tortorella remarked. “The only way I can explain it is (the players) get it, they’ve been there. A lot of this team has won and gone through the process of going through playoffs, and they rely on that. I think they challenge themselves. It isn’t a physical skill, it’s a mental skill, and we have that. I don’t know if we win the series, but I know we have that in this organization.”

Note: This recap is an independently written summary based on publicly available reporting.