Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley vowed to bring the Stanely Cup to the Sin City within the first five years of the team’s existence. Last season was the deadline on that vow, and how did the Golden Knight’s management and roster respond? They missed the playoffs for the first time in franchise history.
There can be no question that the Vegas Golden Knights’ upper management has made plenty of coaching and roster mistakes in the past. For example, who can forget the whole Evgenii Dadonov trade fiasco that happen at the Tade Deadline this year? The Golden Knight management tried trading Dadonov to the Anaheim Ducks in the final hours of the window, even though Dadonov had a no-trade clause to the Ducks.
Of course, the trade fell through, and Vegas was forced to keep Dadonov’s $5 million salary-cap hit contract. Yup, that is A+ management right there.
And because of Vegas’ inability to move Dadonov’s $5 million contract on, they were also unable to free up Mark Stone, Ronin Lehner, and Alec Martinez consecutively from IR as they would have been well above the salary cap if they did.
These management debacles deserve a whole article on it regardless of anything else that was wrong with the teams. But still, these salary cap problems were only half of the repugnant erosion that derailed Vegas’ quest for the cup last year. The other half was Pete DeBeor.
I’m not saying that DeBeor is a bad coach as he is not. He led two teams (the 2011/12 New Jersey Devils and the 2015/16 San Jose Sharks) to the Stanley Cup Finals. I’m just saying that he was a bad fit for the Vegas Golden Knights from the start.
Since its entrance into the league in the 2017/18 season, Vegas has always been a team that is a shutdown defensively, while putting up just enough goals to take them far into the playoffs. That is how they were able to make the Stanley Cup Finals in their first year, as well as making it to the Conference Finals in their third and fourth years.
With DeBeor, something changed. Yes, management had already begun dismantling their 2017/18 Stanley Cup Finalist team (in hindsight, was to the Golden Knights detriment). And yes, with star offensive players like Jack Eichel, Jonathan Marchessault, Max Pacioretty, and Mark Stone, you are bound to sacrifice some defensive strength for offensive flair. But, under DeBeor, it was as if Vegas forget how they became successful by forsaking defense completely.
Apart from Vegas’ stellar defensive 2020/21 season, in which Vegas only played against their Pacific Division rivals, Vegas did not crack the Top-10 in Goal Against Per Game (GAA) in either of Pete DeBeor’s two full seasons. The Vegas Golden Knights under Gerrard Gellant were a staple in the Top-10 for GAA, as well as Shots Against Per Game. And with defenders like Alec Martinez, Shea Theodore, and Alex Pietrangelo, along with goalies like Marc-Andre Fleury and Robin Lehner, being a Top-10 GAA team should not have been difficult for them.
In DeBeor’s last season, Vegas just made it into the Top-15 GAA with an underwhelming 2.98 GAA per game. This defensive mediocrity has become a trend for DeBeor lead teams. In five years with the San Jose Sharks, DeBeor’s teams only cracked the Top-10 in GAA twice. While his four years with the New Jersey Devils only accumulated in his team breaking into the Top-10 once. From the start, Vegas’ winning brand of hockey and DeBeor’s style of hockey were irrevocably different.
So, you may be wondering, how did Bruce Cassidy’s Boston Bruins play defensively? Well, in his seven years (his first being only an interim coach after Claude Julien was fired) with the Bruins, his teams made the Top-10 in GAA every single year. And in his six full years with the Bruins, his teams made the Top-5 each time (with 2019/20 season ending up #1). He clearly knows how to coach defense.
Okay, one may argue that he had Hall of Fame caliber players like Zdeno Chara on defense and Tuukka Rask in net for the vast majority of time which improved his teams’ defensive stats. These people would be right. He did, and he used them and their strengths expertly.
Similarly, to Boston, Vegas has had future Hall of Famer Marc-Andre Fleury in net, as well as having superstar Alex Pietrangelo on the blue line for a vast majority of Pete DeBeor’s time too. The difference between them being that Cassidy knew how to get the best from his defense and goaltending, while DeBoer did not.
Anyway, I’m confident that Bruce Cassidy will get the best out of this Vegas team defensively, while also allowing players like Jack Eichel, Max Pacioretty, and Mark Stone to express themselves offensively just as successful as he did in Boston.
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