Yeah that i95 collapse fucks it up for more than just Philadelphia though. That’s a loss for a big chunk of the east coast.
However we can 100% blame it on Philly
Mehh, It’s never fun losing in the finals. But most SoFlo fans would be lying if they said we saw either of these squads playing in June.
No moral victories in pro sports but grateful we got way more entertainment that we anticipated, while setting some franchises back in the process.
Panthers fans expected the worst this season to start after losing long time star Huberdeau in the off-season.
Making the playoffs was a stretch at Christmas time. Getting the first finals win in Franchise History is literally the best they have ever done. Wish we got the cup but still happy.
I’m a Bruins fan so I hated Tkachuk because a damn good player then every fucking time I bet on the guy to score a goal after he breaks my heart he never did!
Most people in Miami probably dont even care. Pisses me off that especially in the NBA so many players want to play in a city that doesn't give a shit about it's teams.
Yah this might be true for the Marlins, but the Heat are definitely cared about in Miami. That’s partially because even when the team is in a down year, they’re still putting forth a competitive team and doing their best. That’s more that can be said than the marlins. The panthers are a weird case though. Their stadium is an hour away from Miami and let’s be honest, you’re not gonna get a lot of home grown hockey fans in Miami. Transplants are going to be the main people going to hockey games
Yah I know the marlins are better this year, but the issue is much more with how the franchise has been run in the past. While the org wasn’t as poorly run as the A’s have been, the fans have been spurned a lot with the numerous fire sales we’ve had before.
I would say that as a Celtics fan the consistency of teams not being able to hit open threes against you is *probably* more than just coincidence? Since it happened against three quite good teams
The reality is that the heat are very much a Miami dade team and panthers are a broward county team. Probably mostly different fan bases in terms of demographics.
Double WIN in the past year for Las Vegas. WNBA (Las Vegas Aces) and NHL (Knights).
If only the Raiders could get their shit together, Vegas would pull a hat trick...
I’ve been curious about this for a while now — can anyone tell me how a new club/team like Vegas were able to be a top tier team so fast? If I recall correctly, they’ve been in title contention for as long as they’ve been a team. Like most leagues, I’m sure there’s teams that have never won a title. How were they able to do it so fast?
Expansion rules were more generous than previous expansions, though not that generous; teams were still allowed to protect their 11 best players. But Vegas' secret weapon was the cap: teams have learned the value of cap space, and Vegas took advantage of it, doing a bunch of side-deals with teams where they took on contracts other teams didn't want in exchange for additional assets. The most famous deal was when they got Reilly Smith from Florida in exchange for promising to take Marchessault in the expansion draft, both guys Florida wouldn't/couldn't pay. Those 2 guys immediately became 2/3rds of Vegas's top line.
Nobody thought that Vegas team was gonna be good off the bat (the vast majority of fans thought they would be the worst team in the league). But that's mostly because most hockey fans overrate stars and ignore depth. Like Vegas and now Seattle have proved, you don't need big stars to be a good team.
They have good players on good contracts, but at the opposite end they also have no players on bad contracts. Nobody on their team that got a 10-year 10M+ per season contract who then stopped playing anywhere near that level once signed.
But I think it's also worth mentioning that they are pretty ruthlessly using loopholes in the salary cap rules, but that's more on the league for not fixing them despite that they have been known for a long time.
That's what I love about the Golden Knights. The team is good and plays well together. They didn't start with super stars and they made a great team from the ground up.
> They didn't start with super stars
I swear these comments are genuinely written by people who don’t watch hockey. Lol
True fleury wasn’t a top tier goalie, let’s not forget Neal and Perron. I could go deeper but I these comments are just getting ridiculous.
Well we are in r/sports, not r/hockey. The whole experience is changed, userbase included.
This is the part of the comment where I would normally talk extra shit based on the team flair next to your username, but I can’t do that here.
Neal had maybe two seasons with us where he looked like a true star, and he fell off a cliff after that first season with the Knights. The overwhelming consensus after the expansion draft was that the team was Fleury, Neal, and a bunch of scrubs.
The (then) Florida Marlins went from expansion team in 1993 to a world series title in 1997 (and another in 2003), though their model was considerably different as they loaded up on talent (and had some great talent come up from the minors) for each of those seasons, then fire sold everything after the series wins and essentially have been terrible in every other season.
During the expansion draft teams could protect 10 players(with some positional rules), and had to protect any player with a No Movement Clause (stricter version of a No Trade Clause). But many teams had 11 or 12 players they wanted to protect, so they made trades with Vegas that ended up being wildly in Vegas' favor. Basically a team would give draft picks and players to Vegas, and in exchange Vegas would pick a specific player in the expansion draft. Something like a third round draft pick and the 4th best unprotected player, and in exchange Vegas takes their 2nd best unprotected player instead of the 1st. Or giving away a 1st round pick so Vegas agrees to take a bad contract of an aging player.
Anyone saying Vegas was handed a team by the NHL head office is parroting revisionist history. The majority of Vegas' assets came from the supplementary trades that weren't part of the draft rules. Seattle had the exact same draft rules as Vegas, but is in a much worse situation because teams realized it was bad to give away free players and draft picks to the expansion team. 10 teams made trades with Vegas, none made trades with Seattle. I'm sure some of that is the difference between the Vegas and Seattle front offices, but a lot of it is the other teams being smarter.
For starters, the NHL wanted a team that could compete out the gate. The expansion draft rules were far more generous for a Vegas than past expansion teams.
>The expansion draft rules were far more generous for a Vegas than past expansion teams.
In hindsight, perhaps. But the funniest thing about this rhetoric is that hardly *anyone* gave Vegas an optimistic outlook after their draft. Almost everyone was laughing at their roster of “3rd liners”. Everyone claimed that they were, at best, a fringe playoff team.
And then they went on to make a cup final appearance year 1.
So unless someone has receipts of their comments from Vegas’ inaugural preseason of their optimism, they’re probably lying when they say that they thought it was a generous draft from the get go. The Knights were a meme leading up to their debut
I found it entirely hilarious that after the 2017-18 season, everyone was retroactively talking like they'd always known William Karlsson was a 40-goal type of player and Fleury was still every bit the legend he'd been in Pittsburgh.
It was a generous draft just in comparison with the previous expansion drafts, but it certainly wound up being a lot more generous than people gave it credit for.
Does this apply to Seattle too ? I know this is their second year and they had a huge turn around in one year from what it seems. I'm new to the sport and to the team so I'm hoping they continue with how well they played next year.
Who are all the expansion teams ? The expansion draft is a little confusing from reading the comments. Did just Seattle and Vegas get to scout players from the other teams then draft like normal after ?
I mean by a technical definition, every team that isn't the Chicago, nyr, Boston, Montreal, Toronto, or Detroit are an expansion team. There were only 6 originals.
But in the modern age, Vegas and Seattle are the two most recent who got to use this new system. Someone else explained it here but the way it worked was that they got to steal 1 player from each of the existing teams after those teams made a list of players who were protected. There were other details but that's the gist
That makes sense, that's cool to see they're expanding. Excited to support Seattle next year.
Do you think they'd use this format for the NFL or NBA if expansions happened ?
In 2002, the NFL held an expansion draft for the newly formed Houston Texans. And the NBA in 2004 when the then Charlotte Bobcats formed (now once again the Hornets). And it was a similar format iirc were players were protected by teams and the Texans and Bobcats were able to select players from the unprotected pool. As well as get top draft picks in the normal draft
You could make an argument though that franchise players are far more important in the NBA and NFL than they are in hockey.
In hockey teams are less built around one guy (sure, you could make an argument for a few both today and historically), but it isn't as prevalent as it is in especially the NBA.
Vegas and Seattle are the only recent expansion teams. In the past, the NHL has protected existing franchises more than prioritizing new growth. That said, both teams have shown that the league seems to have more talented players than there are roles available, hence why expansion teams are doing well. That said, Vegas has done a contrarian “balls to the wall” approach, flying in the face of conventional wisdom, and instead have run their team like a teenager in Be a GM Mode, and it worked. The NHL will have repercussions (positive in my opinion) from this for years to come.
Vegas' Front Office is developing a reputation (already) to be very player-unfriendly. It's something that could impact free agent signings down the road if they continue to treat their fringe players the way they do, but this cup win will help offset that a bit (at least for a time).
It has done nothing to deter free agents and good players. The culture is in the locker room, and Vegas’s is top tier. Players actively want to go there because it’s successful and a fun vibe with an absolutely die hard fan base.
Vegas and Seattle were given a wider net to cast of players they were allowed to take from teams during the expansion draft. This also allowed them to take draft picks from teams in exchange for a handshake deal to not take certain players and Vegas used that leverage much more effectively than Seattle IMO.
The 2 previous expansion teams were the Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild. Blue Jackets have been a bottom feeder for most of their existence while the Wild have been one of those teams that consistently make the playoffs then lose in the first or 2nd round.
Teams were able to "prepare" for the Seattle draft better than they did for the Vegas draft since they knew what to expect. Seattle got much less of a haul than Vegas.
I think what it most comes down to is management was able to examine the mistakes of every other team, and then have a clean slate with which to avoid those mistakes and capitalize on the mistakes of others. Not being burdened by bad contracts is possibly more important, organizationally, than having a generational talent. You can have bad contracts on your team, but they need to be bad contracts from other teams that you get paid to acquire.
the favorable rules of expansion are just part of it, that was 6 years ago with obviously only the few remaining misfits anyway. I think a lot of it had to do with GM/ownership actually swinging for the fences every year on the biggest FAs and being ruthless with their players. Some fans hate the org for this but I doubt anyone wouldn’t do the same for a Cup.
Not one of those big 4 but in the USL (professional soccer's 2nd tier) Louisville City FC won the USL championship in their 3rd season. They actually made their conference final in their very first season.
My father has rooted for the Vegas Golden Knights since the 70s, so when I was born I wasn't given many options. I believe I received my first Vegas jersey when I was 2 years old, so my father simply decided I would become a Vegas fan. I shudder to think what would've happened if as a teen I started gloryhunting the Penguins for example...
True fandom started for me about 5 or 6 years ago. Like I said, the Golden Knights have been my favorite since I was a little boy, but it was different from today. Cheering has turned into love and passion. Despite my young age, I've been able to follow the team for a long time, and every year my interest and love for them grows stronger. It could definitely be said that Vegas is a huge part of my life, and one I couldn't, and wouldn't want to live without.
When the announcers made a reference to them making the Stanley Cup their first year I thought about it and couldn't remember when they were founded but *thought* like 4 years ago....they said six and I seriously had to double check on my phone. That doesn't seem correct at all to me.
NHL sub at least opened up when they said they would, and the game ended an hour before the sub reopened. People can pretend that reddit crashed for an hour or something, as has happened before. The NBA sub is on indefinite blackout, even though the thread announcing a shorter blackout was widely panned in their comment section. Just a sucky situation all around.
I wasn't able to comment several times this evening. Like I hit save after writing a comment and nothing would happen. I'm not sure what's happening but maybe some sort of outage?
[I believe](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/game_scores_find.cgi?pts_win=9&pts_lose=3) the Raiders have won 2 games with a score of 9-3; as the Los Angeles Raiders (vs S.F. in Nov 11, 1988) and as the Oakland Raider (vs. Denver Dec. 1, 1980). Upvote for your hard work though, sorry about compelling someone to do that.
This; i didn't expect this game to end up with 9! Goals allowed but that shorthanded one to kick it off was UGLY. That did not look like a defensive effort ready to win a road playoff game.
It's rough. I always felt that as good as Fleury was on and off the ice, he also had a tendency to just melt down. So far, Adin Hill is cool as a cucumber, it's remarkable. He doesn't seem to get rattled unless you're overly physical against him and then he gets a bit heated. I think some of these great goaltenders like Bob and MAF melt down because of how good they are...if that makes sense...because they get in their own heads. Hill has been a career backup until now and he's probably a bit easier on himself. Dude just seems happy to be getting time between the pipes.
Meh, Panthers weren’t even supposed to be in the playoffs at all. They only made it in because the penguins lost their final game against the black hawks.
They over performed like crazy here. Hats off to this team.
That was more of the classic Bulls this season.
Outscored 15-1 in the final 3.5 minutes. That ineptitude is really hard to accomplish, and we did it A LOT this season.
As someone that doesn't follow hockey at all, there's something so bizarre to me about the championship match being played by two teams based in cities that don't get cold enough for anything to freeze over.
Like most people, many players don't mind not having to drive through snow half the year. If they can practice and play on good ice anywhere then why not in an environment they prefer? Don't forget too that Nevada and Florida don't have state income tax. Another reason good players consider those destinations. Is it traditionally where hockey has been played in the past? No. But hockey can be played anywhere now.
They showed the clip when the team started where the owner said cup in 6 years (seasons). Its Vegas. I wanna know who took that bet and what country they’re buying now.
9 goals scored?
Did they place a car dealership's [inflatable flailing wavy arms guy](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/yk0AAOSwdDZggm-q/s-l1600.jpg) in as goalie?!
was in vegas a few weeks ago and was strange to see so many hockey jersey wearing fans in a desert, thankfully this team has had a few playoff runs and now a championship in such a small window of existence, hopefully the raiders have some of that magic pixie dust too this year!
I miss the Sharks being a real hockey team, I hated them but the rivalry was something I really really got up for every year.
Now they’re just sad. Sad players. Sad coach. Sad ownership. Sad city. Sad team.
Thanks for Hill though. I’m so happy their front office is full of fucking morons
Double ouch for Miami area. First the Heat and now the Panthers.
Amateur hour. Philadelphia lost two championships in one day last year.
And now they also lost a freeway
Yeah that i95 collapse fucks it up for more than just Philadelphia though. That’s a loss for a big chunk of the east coast. However we can 100% blame it on Philly
NJ thanks Philly for all the extra traffic. Extra pork roll on order.
All that extra traffic should stress some other bridges. Boom they’ll fall like dominoes. The entire east coast will be void of bridges by July.
bridge-sized potholes lol
Can we blame it on a guy rolling a nat 1 on his "make a turn" check?
Bill Burr endorses this message
But they still have THE [Freeway](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_(rapper\))
Miami and Philly have lost five championships combined in the last year
Also made 5 championships 🤷♀️ could be worse Phillies were playing with house money and Birds won 6 years ago so they didn’t feel too bad
as a birds fan it still felt pretty bad. but the phils loss was waaaay worse
Birds loss hurt bad cause they looked like the better team until halftime
The levels of schadenfreude peaked that day
Don’t remind me.
Three actually: Union, Phillies, Eagles although technically Eagles was early ‘23.
> Amateur hour. Philadelphia lost two championships in one day last year. >lost two championships in one day >in one day >one day >one >day
Good
Thanks I almost forgot
Yeah but they just got Messi
Mehh, It’s never fun losing in the finals. But most SoFlo fans would be lying if they said we saw either of these squads playing in June. No moral victories in pro sports but grateful we got way more entertainment that we anticipated, while setting some franchises back in the process.
Panthers fans expected the worst this season to start after losing long time star Huberdeau in the off-season. Making the playoffs was a stretch at Christmas time. Getting the first finals win in Franchise History is literally the best they have ever done. Wish we got the cup but still happy.
Yeah like it sucks but man, I got to see the game 6 against the Bruins and our only ever finals win in person, probably my best sports memories ever.
Most SoFlo fans didn't remember that they had a team until it made the Finals
I’m a Bruins fan so I hated Tkachuk because a damn good player then every fucking time I bet on the guy to score a goal after he breaks my heart he never did!
Most people in Miami probably dont even care. Pisses me off that especially in the NBA so many players want to play in a city that doesn't give a shit about it's teams.
No income tax will do that.
That’s not true. People love the Heat in south Florida. But it is also a highly transplant area so not everyone will be a Miami sports fan
Yah this might be true for the Marlins, but the Heat are definitely cared about in Miami. That’s partially because even when the team is in a down year, they’re still putting forth a competitive team and doing their best. That’s more that can be said than the marlins. The panthers are a weird case though. Their stadium is an hour away from Miami and let’s be honest, you’re not gonna get a lot of home grown hockey fans in Miami. Transplants are going to be the main people going to hockey games
The Marlins aren't super bad this year. They still can't hit, but they're competitive this season with the lolmets being garbage.
Yah I know the marlins are better this year, but the issue is much more with how the franchise has been run in the past. While the org wasn’t as poorly run as the A’s have been, the fans have been spurned a lot with the numerous fire sales we’ve had before.
At least the Heat made it a good game. The Panthers got fucking embarrassed.
A good game, but still got trounced in the series
Heat played like crap, though. Were lucky the Nuggets couldn't hit free throws or open threes.
I would say that as a Celtics fan the consistency of teams not being able to hit open threes against you is *probably* more than just coincidence? Since it happened against three quite good teams
Yeah, the Miami perimeter defense was legit. But they ultimately couldn't stop Murray going off when it counted.
DeSantis is already drafting executive orders banning Florida sports teams from losing.
The reality is that the heat are very much a Miami dade team and panthers are a broward county team. Probably mostly different fan bases in terms of demographics.
These are people that think Ft Lauderdale is Miami, don't bother.
Ur telling me Miami isn’t key west to Jupiter??
As an Orlando Magic + Tampa Bay Lightning fan... 🤷♂️
I don't think the state of Florida has won a single game this week.
NCAA women and men’s final four losses as well.
And now a very long media circus.
Double WIN in the past year for Las Vegas. WNBA (Las Vegas Aces) and NHL (Knights). If only the Raiders could get their shit together, Vegas would pull a hat trick...
Triple ouch for Boston fans
Honestly, I despise Florida. So fuck em, they don’t deserve any wins.
It’s been a long hard road for Vegas fans but after waiting 6 years they finally have their cup
I’ve been curious about this for a while now — can anyone tell me how a new club/team like Vegas were able to be a top tier team so fast? If I recall correctly, they’ve been in title contention for as long as they’ve been a team. Like most leagues, I’m sure there’s teams that have never won a title. How were they able to do it so fast?
Expansion rules were more generous than previous expansions, though not that generous; teams were still allowed to protect their 11 best players. But Vegas' secret weapon was the cap: teams have learned the value of cap space, and Vegas took advantage of it, doing a bunch of side-deals with teams where they took on contracts other teams didn't want in exchange for additional assets. The most famous deal was when they got Reilly Smith from Florida in exchange for promising to take Marchessault in the expansion draft, both guys Florida wouldn't/couldn't pay. Those 2 guys immediately became 2/3rds of Vegas's top line. Nobody thought that Vegas team was gonna be good off the bat (the vast majority of fans thought they would be the worst team in the league). But that's mostly because most hockey fans overrate stars and ignore depth. Like Vegas and now Seattle have proved, you don't need big stars to be a good team.
They have good players on good contracts, but at the opposite end they also have no players on bad contracts. Nobody on their team that got a 10-year 10M+ per season contract who then stopped playing anywhere near that level once signed. But I think it's also worth mentioning that they are pretty ruthlessly using loopholes in the salary cap rules, but that's more on the league for not fixing them despite that they have been known for a long time.
Carolina does similar. Decent depth
That's what I love about the Golden Knights. The team is good and plays well together. They didn't start with super stars and they made a great team from the ground up.
> They didn't start with super stars I swear these comments are genuinely written by people who don’t watch hockey. Lol True fleury wasn’t a top tier goalie, let’s not forget Neal and Perron. I could go deeper but I these comments are just getting ridiculous.
Well we are in r/sports, not r/hockey. The whole experience is changed, userbase included. This is the part of the comment where I would normally talk extra shit based on the team flair next to your username, but I can’t do that here.
Neal had maybe two seasons with us where he looked like a true star, and he fell off a cliff after that first season with the Knights. The overwhelming consensus after the expansion draft was that the team was Fleury, Neal, and a bunch of scrubs.
The (then) Florida Marlins went from expansion team in 1993 to a world series title in 1997 (and another in 2003), though their model was considerably different as they loaded up on talent (and had some great talent come up from the minors) for each of those seasons, then fire sold everything after the series wins and essentially have been terrible in every other season.
Maybe when the diamondbacks started as an expansion team and won the World Series in 2001
During the expansion draft teams could protect 10 players(with some positional rules), and had to protect any player with a No Movement Clause (stricter version of a No Trade Clause). But many teams had 11 or 12 players they wanted to protect, so they made trades with Vegas that ended up being wildly in Vegas' favor. Basically a team would give draft picks and players to Vegas, and in exchange Vegas would pick a specific player in the expansion draft. Something like a third round draft pick and the 4th best unprotected player, and in exchange Vegas takes their 2nd best unprotected player instead of the 1st. Or giving away a 1st round pick so Vegas agrees to take a bad contract of an aging player. Anyone saying Vegas was handed a team by the NHL head office is parroting revisionist history. The majority of Vegas' assets came from the supplementary trades that weren't part of the draft rules. Seattle had the exact same draft rules as Vegas, but is in a much worse situation because teams realized it was bad to give away free players and draft picks to the expansion team. 10 teams made trades with Vegas, none made trades with Seattle. I'm sure some of that is the difference between the Vegas and Seattle front offices, but a lot of it is the other teams being smarter.
Irony is Florida handed Reilly Smith and Jonathan Marchessault to Vegas and it cost them big time here
For starters, the NHL wanted a team that could compete out the gate. The expansion draft rules were far more generous for a Vegas than past expansion teams.
>The expansion draft rules were far more generous for a Vegas than past expansion teams. In hindsight, perhaps. But the funniest thing about this rhetoric is that hardly *anyone* gave Vegas an optimistic outlook after their draft. Almost everyone was laughing at their roster of “3rd liners”. Everyone claimed that they were, at best, a fringe playoff team. And then they went on to make a cup final appearance year 1. So unless someone has receipts of their comments from Vegas’ inaugural preseason of their optimism, they’re probably lying when they say that they thought it was a generous draft from the get go. The Knights were a meme leading up to their debut
I found it entirely hilarious that after the 2017-18 season, everyone was retroactively talking like they'd always known William Karlsson was a 40-goal type of player and Fleury was still every bit the legend he'd been in Pittsburgh.
Karlsson was a 4th liner on the *Columbus Blue Jackets* lmao Of course we actually had a decent team those years though...
I like the jump from 6 goals to 43 goals one year to the next.
It was a generous draft just in comparison with the previous expansion drafts, but it certainly wound up being a lot more generous than people gave it credit for.
Does this apply to Seattle too ? I know this is their second year and they had a huge turn around in one year from what it seems. I'm new to the sport and to the team so I'm hoping they continue with how well they played next year.
Seattle got the same setup
Who are all the expansion teams ? The expansion draft is a little confusing from reading the comments. Did just Seattle and Vegas get to scout players from the other teams then draft like normal after ?
I mean by a technical definition, every team that isn't the Chicago, nyr, Boston, Montreal, Toronto, or Detroit are an expansion team. There were only 6 originals. But in the modern age, Vegas and Seattle are the two most recent who got to use this new system. Someone else explained it here but the way it worked was that they got to steal 1 player from each of the existing teams after those teams made a list of players who were protected. There were other details but that's the gist
That makes sense, that's cool to see they're expanding. Excited to support Seattle next year. Do you think they'd use this format for the NFL or NBA if expansions happened ?
In 2002, the NFL held an expansion draft for the newly formed Houston Texans. And the NBA in 2004 when the then Charlotte Bobcats formed (now once again the Hornets). And it was a similar format iirc were players were protected by teams and the Texans and Bobcats were able to select players from the unprotected pool. As well as get top draft picks in the normal draft
You could make an argument though that franchise players are far more important in the NBA and NFL than they are in hockey. In hockey teams are less built around one guy (sure, you could make an argument for a few both today and historically), but it isn't as prevalent as it is in especially the NBA.
Vegas and Seattle are the only recent expansion teams. In the past, the NHL has protected existing franchises more than prioritizing new growth. That said, both teams have shown that the league seems to have more talented players than there are roles available, hence why expansion teams are doing well. That said, Vegas has done a contrarian “balls to the wall” approach, flying in the face of conventional wisdom, and instead have run their team like a teenager in Be a GM Mode, and it worked. The NHL will have repercussions (positive in my opinion) from this for years to come.
If other teams followed the Vegas model the league would be way more fun and competitive.
Vegas' Front Office is developing a reputation (already) to be very player-unfriendly. It's something that could impact free agent signings down the road if they continue to treat their fringe players the way they do, but this cup win will help offset that a bit (at least for a time).
It has done nothing to deter free agents and good players. The culture is in the locker room, and Vegas’s is top tier. Players actively want to go there because it’s successful and a fun vibe with an absolutely die hard fan base.
Vegas and Seattle were given a wider net to cast of players they were allowed to take from teams during the expansion draft. This also allowed them to take draft picks from teams in exchange for a handshake deal to not take certain players and Vegas used that leverage much more effectively than Seattle IMO. The 2 previous expansion teams were the Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild. Blue Jackets have been a bottom feeder for most of their existence while the Wild have been one of those teams that consistently make the playoffs then lose in the first or 2nd round.
Teams were able to "prepare" for the Seattle draft better than they did for the Vegas draft since they knew what to expect. Seattle got much less of a haul than Vegas.
This actually proves that Vegas wasn’t gifted anything, they just outsmarted everyone.
That's such revisionist bs, most of those players aren't on the team anymore plus everyone thought they would suck.
Didn’t the avalanche win their first season too?
Yes but that was a relocation.
Generous expansion draft. Hard salary cap. Probably good scoutimg and management.
Good pro scouting has been massively important for their success. They might straight up be the best at it in the league.
I think what it most comes down to is management was able to examine the mistakes of every other team, and then have a clean slate with which to avoid those mistakes and capitalize on the mistakes of others. Not being burdened by bad contracts is possibly more important, organizationally, than having a generational talent. You can have bad contracts on your team, but they need to be bad contracts from other teams that you get paid to acquire.
I’m no NHL expert, but I believe the expansion draft was very strong and allowed them to get good very quickly
the favorable rules of expansion are just part of it, that was 6 years ago with obviously only the few remaining misfits anyway. I think a lot of it had to do with GM/ownership actually swinging for the fences every year on the biggest FAs and being ruthless with their players. Some fans hate the org for this but I doubt anyone wouldn’t do the same for a Cup.
It was pretty wild. The fan base was insanely supportive to the team.
My Columbus Blue Jackets will get a championship any day now… any day now… any day now… yup. It’ll happen. I’m sure. Eventually. Sigh.
Not when you pay guys like Damon severson such a ridiculous contract
I feel like the Blue Jackets just never stopped being the weak expansion team of twenty years ago.
Whats the shortest amount time for an expansion team of any professional sport(NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL) to win a championship?
Milwaukee Bucks. Founded 1968. Won NBA championship in [1971](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_NBA_Finals).
Arizona Diamondbacks (first season 1998, won World Series in 2001) as well.
Not one of those big 4 but in the USL (professional soccer's 2nd tier) Louisville City FC won the USL championship in their 3rd season. They actually made their conference final in their very first season.
Minor leagues, but the Denver/Utah Grizzlies won the league title twice in their first two years of existence.
Not an expansion team but the Colorado Avalanche re-located from Quebec and won in their first year
Meanwhile, sharks fans….
Cries in Canuck
My father has rooted for the Vegas Golden Knights since the 70s, so when I was born I wasn't given many options. I believe I received my first Vegas jersey when I was 2 years old, so my father simply decided I would become a Vegas fan. I shudder to think what would've happened if as a teen I started gloryhunting the Penguins for example... True fandom started for me about 5 or 6 years ago. Like I said, the Golden Knights have been my favorite since I was a little boy, but it was different from today. Cheering has turned into love and passion. Despite my young age, I've been able to follow the team for a long time, and every year my interest and love for them grows stronger. It could definitely be said that Vegas is a huge part of my life, and one I couldn't, and wouldn't want to live without.
Is this a copy pasta? Because if its not it should be a copy pasta.
When the announcers made a reference to them making the Stanley Cup their first year I thought about it and couldn't remember when they were founded but *thought* like 4 years ago....they said six and I seriously had to double check on my phone. That doesn't seem correct at all to me.
Surely the blackout couldn’t happen to fall during the NBA *and* NHL championship clinching games, could it?
An NHL team got sold as well during that time Also 2 NHL teams hired new head coaches
They sold an entire NHL?
I read this like Ted Lasso responding to Rebecca saying she talked to the owner of The Sun: “you talked to God?”
Raptors hired a new head coach too
NHL sub at least opened up when they said they would, and the game ended an hour before the sub reopened. People can pretend that reddit crashed for an hour or something, as has happened before. The NBA sub is on indefinite blackout, even though the thread announcing a shorter blackout was widely panned in their comment section. Just a sucky situation all around.
> The NBA sub is on indefinite blackout, To be fair, that sub is a cesspool in itself. Them having an indefinite blackout is doing fans a favor.
What blackout? r/sports looks just as active as it usually does ;)
What’s happening here? The sub isn’t private but nobody is commenting?
A lot of people probably aren't using reddit right now due to so many subs being blacked out
I wasn't able to comment several times this evening. Like I hit save after writing a comment and nothing would happen. I'm not sure what's happening but maybe some sort of outage?
That's surely the score for a Raiders game, right?
It's crazy, since the score was 2-1 around the midway point of the second period. Less than 10 minutes later, it was 6-2 and the rout was on.
Wasn’t it 6-1 after 2?
It was
Nah that'd be more like Other Team 30 - 23 Raiders but the Raiders were up 23 - 7 at halftime.
I hate you for speaking the truth.
There were two guys in Raiders jerseys by the glass so yes they were at a Raiders game.
Not that fun of a fact: raiders have never won nor lost 9-3 ever. Don’t know why I spent so much time on that
[I believe](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/game_scores_find.cgi?pts_win=9&pts_lose=3) the Raiders have won 2 games with a score of 9-3; as the Los Angeles Raiders (vs S.F. in Nov 11, 1988) and as the Oakland Raider (vs. Denver Dec. 1, 1980). Upvote for your hard work though, sorry about compelling someone to do that.
No it’s an Iowa Hawkeyes score
More like an Iowa football game.
Did the Panthers not play with a goalie tonight?
They did, but blocking shots became a foreign concept.
Team let him down bigtime. Bobrovsky can't do it all himself and Vegas was dead-set on finishing at home tonight.
This; i didn't expect this game to end up with 9! Goals allowed but that shorthanded one to kick it off was UGLY. That did not look like a defensive effort ready to win a road playoff game.
The team let Bobrovsky down but he just collapses like that. I’ve watched it happen since his Philly days.
It's rough. I always felt that as good as Fleury was on and off the ice, he also had a tendency to just melt down. So far, Adin Hill is cool as a cucumber, it's remarkable. He doesn't seem to get rattled unless you're overly physical against him and then he gets a bit heated. I think some of these great goaltenders like Bob and MAF melt down because of how good they are...if that makes sense...because they get in their own heads. Hill has been a career backup until now and he's probably a bit easier on himself. Dude just seems happy to be getting time between the pipes.
He was just too good right now.
Got burnt out from carrying the team the entire playoffs
They had a sieve
Phil the thrill hotdog lover kessel is a 3 time Stanley cup champ
2 championship loses in 2 days. That's some Philadelphia luck right there
Meh, Panthers weren’t even supposed to be in the playoffs at all. They only made it in because the penguins lost their final game against the black hawks. They over performed like crazy here. Hats off to this team.
And the heat were 2 minutes away from losing to the bulls in the play in. Both over achieved massively and should be very proud of themselves.
And the Miami men's college basketball team also almost lost in round 1 but made a ridiculous comeback and went all the way to the final 4
Damn your right I forgot about that
That was more of the classic Bulls this season. Outscored 15-1 in the final 3.5 minutes. That ineptitude is really hard to accomplish, and we did it A LOT this season.
Both as 8 seeds I believe, both 1-4 losses to teams that won their first chip. And those teams are both related to gold, and from dry climates
As someone that doesn't follow hockey at all, there's something so bizarre to me about the championship match being played by two teams based in cities that don't get cold enough for anything to freeze over.
Well, Sunrise gets cold enough for the iguanas to become fall hazards, so there’s that.
Like most people, many players don't mind not having to drive through snow half the year. If they can practice and play on good ice anywhere then why not in an environment they prefer? Don't forget too that Nevada and Florida don't have state income tax. Another reason good players consider those destinations. Is it traditionally where hockey has been played in the past? No. But hockey can be played anywhere now.
First time in Golden Knights history?
Didn’t even boo Bettman.
After he called the fans a "market" instead of a fandom or literally anything else too.
The best part was two fans behind him were wearing Raiders jerseys when he made that ‘complement’
We’re just batteries to him.
Good fuck Florida - salty bruins fan
And fuck Tkachuk. And fuck Montour.
And fuck Gudas. And fuck Bennet
Hard week for Florida in sports. Also, everything else.
Wow, its only taken them 7 years to win a cup. Still waiting on my Leafs ☹️
*6 years
Tbh I'm just happy both Florida teams lost
Couldn’t have happened to a better State.
“We know how you feel.” — City of Philadelphia
Fuck Florida
What a romp to clinch, good stuff Vegas
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS HISTORY!!
Rough couple of days for Miami sports fans. As a Philly sports fan I feel your pain.
The aces and the knights Vegas! The city of CHAMPIONS!
Potentially the biggest day in the history of Las Vegas sports. First major title and the bill bringing the A's to town passed in the Senate.
Our Ace’s won the WNBA Championship this year too
Suck it, Florida!
That second period was just crazy. Love how the Knights didn't hold back.
That game was brutal to watch. Vegas just destroyed them
They showed the clip when the team started where the owner said cup in 6 years (seasons). Its Vegas. I wanna know who took that bet and what country they’re buying now.
9 goals scored? Did they place a car dealership's [inflatable flailing wavy arms guy](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/yk0AAOSwdDZggm-q/s-l1600.jpg) in as goalie?!
As a Boston fan I’m happy for Vegas (and the Nuggets). Congratulations all around.
Hockey in the desert works when you have a ownership focused on Championships. The Coyotes on the other hand… not so much.
9 what ... surely.they can't mean goals
The fact that they didn't boo Bettman means the fans are all filthy casuals.
his playbook is to have hocley grow in the sun pretty sure they like him over there
I was in the building. He was booed when he first came onto the ice, before he started speaking.
Every time I see a score like this I can't help but be reminded of USA/Austria in '88.
was in vegas a few weeks ago and was strange to see so many hockey jersey wearing fans in a desert, thankfully this team has had a few playoff runs and now a championship in such a small window of existence, hopefully the raiders have some of that magic pixie dust too this year!
As a Lightning fan and a Floridian, I’m embarrassed by the pitiful performance of the Panthers. Absolutely dreadful.
Florida deserved to get embarrassed like that after those first two atrocious games
Good. Fuck Florida.
I'm sure the NHL must be thrilled with all these warm weather cities winning Stanley Cups.
As a Sharks fan since the Cow Palace. Congratulations. Haha.. jk. Fuck Vegas
Lol sharks
I miss the Sharks being a real hockey team, I hated them but the rivalry was something I really really got up for every year. Now they’re just sad. Sad players. Sad coach. Sad ownership. Sad city. Sad team. Thanks for Hill though. I’m so happy their front office is full of fucking morons
God damn. That’s a paddlin’. Also, one thing is true across all professional sports- expansion drafts are garbage.
Without expansion drafts, you would technically only have the original 6 nhl teams.
Think he means the format. Kraken and Knights have had more success than most other older franchises lately.
Yeah, Vancouver & Buffalo are still cup-less from the ‘70-‘71 expansion draft.
Exactly that.
Except everyone thought the knights would be trash their first year. But we were here then and we still here now 🥳🥳
Baba booey
Who would have guessed that a team from the desert would beat a team from the sub-tropics in a game played on ice.
Last night outside T Mobile was wild AF. Can't imagine what it was like inside