The Vegas Golden Knights Will Never Be Bad

It’s been a couple weeks now since Mitch Marner left his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs after nine years to join the Vegas Golden Knights on an 8-year, $96 million deal. With Marner being the latest star to head to Nevada, the move got me thinking... Are the Golden Knights ever going to be a bad hockey team? Seriously. The team has not even existed for a decade and just landed yet another star-calibre player in Marner to put alongside some of their pieces in Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, Shea Theodore, and Noah Hanafin, to just name a few of the studs in this Golden Knights lineup.

Next season will mark just their ninth year in the league, and they’ve only missed the playoffs once (2022). In that time, they’ve made multiple deep playoff runs, including two trips to the Stanley Cup Final. Once in their FIRST YEAR in the NHL, they lost to the Washington Capitals in 2018 and then captured the Stanley Cup five years later in 2023, where they beat the Florida Panthers.

It’s honestly hard to wrap your head around how quickly and consistently they’ve found success. The Knights were supposed to be a fun little expansion team in the desert—instead, they just came in dominant from the start and have never looked back.

And it’s not just about talent. It’s about how they operate. Vegas’ management and ownership group is ruthless. If you no longer bring value, you're out the door—fast. No emotional attachment, no sentimental send-offs. It doesn’t matter if you're a fan favourite or a playoff hero from a year ago; if they can upgrade or create cap space, they do it. Plain and simple.

Most notably, we saw this when they traded franchise icon Marc-Andre Fleury in the summer of 2021 to the Chicago Blackhawks just weeks after he won the Vezina Trophy as the league's top goaltender.

Some fans of other teams have stated how cold or disrespectful some of the Golden Knights actions have felt from a PR perspective, and to be fair, we know that many people around the league hate how Vegas operates. But here’s the truth: it has worked. While other teams hang onto aging players or overpay to keep the core together (cough, cough, Pittsburgh), Vegas reloads. Every time. And the results speak for themselves.

Sure, it’s possible that eventually they’ll hit a rough patch. No team can dodge injuries, bad contracts, or down years forever. But under this current ownership and front office, I just don’t see the Golden Knights ever becoming one of the worst teams in the NHL. They’re too aggressive and too good at finding ways to stay competitive or somehow finding ways to get even better. Whether it’s free agency, trades, or even in the front office of the coaching staff, they just simply get stuff done.

They also have a massive edge most teams don’t: Las Vegas is probably one of the top two most desirable markets in the league, alongside the state of Florida. No taxes, you're famous but can still live a somewhat normal life, and the front office always gives them a chance to win every year—it's easy to see why stars are clambering to find a way to the Golden Knights.

So maybe it is a hot take, but I’m going to say it anyway:

I don't think The Vegas Golden Knights will ever truly bottom out.

Video Reaction: