That's what kills me about all these people whining about vegas making it to the final. They managed to take players other teams didn't feel were important enough to protect and turn them into a cohesive unit. How many of their roster have had breakout years?? William Karlsson!! Flower is playing better than ever! This was not handed to Vegas. They made smart selections, trades, and waiver pickups. Their team trusts each other. Gallant is fantastic. I'm an Avs fan, but I gotta say I'm proud.
Iām going to start off by saying that if I said I thought Vegas would be this good, Iād be a damn liar. I, frankly, donāt remember my exact attitude toward Vegas in the immediate aftermath of the expansion draft/at the beginning of the season, but I think I expected them to be like, a bubble playoff team. Because I follow a lot of writers and analysts, Iām sometimes complicit in the same wonky structure of evaluating players. Hooooo boy, was everybody very very wrong about everything involving Vegas.Ā
But not only did Vegas take players other teams didnāt feel were important enough to protect, they outsmarted them in the process. A lot of GMs overreacted and made trades to protect players they thought were more valuable to their teams when Vegas probably didnāt want a lot of those players anyway. I think maybe the only trueĀ ālucky breakā Vegas got was that Pittsburgh was forced to choose between their two goalies. But Vegas couldāve just as easily not selected MAF, and even then, nobody expected MAF to have as fantastic of a year as heās had.
Vegas deserves a hell of a lot of credit for scouting the teams really well and figuring out a combination of 1) who was good and 2) who was undervalued by his team (and therefore would be unprotected or traded as part of a deal to protect somebody else). I think they did a better job they knew they could do because they didnāt expect to win like this in their first year.
Gallantās coaching style also probably deserves a hell of a lot of credit. Thereās a quote going aroundĀ about not benching players for one mistake, since theyāll just play worried. For a lot of these guys, that was probably new. (I know it was for Eakin.) That certainly didnāt hurt things, Iām sure.Ā
I donāt really get whining about Vegas making it to the final, frankly. You canāt spend the entire season goingĀ āthe NHLās the best league because anything can happen and all it takes is one week for things to change dramaticallyā and then complain whenā¦. āanythingā happens.Ā
I donāt think itās making a mockery of the league. If it makes a mockery of anything, itās making a mockery of the way a lot of GMs decide how valuable a player is to a team. If that forces the league to change, I donāt think itāll be a bad thing. Hell, if we get 31 teams playing with Vegasā system, itāll be an absolute ton of fun to watch.
Vegas was absolutely brilliant in how it constructed this team, from the expansion draft to waiver pickups like Malcom Subban. Other teams made poor decisions, sure, but Vegas capitalized on them (in particular, Iām thinking about Florida.)
And, honestly, I think this has the potential to change a lot about how front offices evaluate players. Will it? Who knows, because the league is so stubborn and resistant to change, but it definitely could.
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