The Vegas Golden Knights open defense of their Stanley Cup championship on Tuesday night when they host the Seattle Kraken in Las Vegas.
The Golden Knights, who finished with a Western Conference-best 111 points last season just one year after failing to make even make the playoffs, will now try to join the Pittsburgh Penguins (2016-17) and the Tampa Bay Lightning (2020-21) as teams in the last decade who were able to win back-to-back Stanley Cups.
“We feel we’re capable (of repeating),” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said following the team’s final preseason game on Saturday afternoon, a 7-4 victory at the Los Angeles Kings. “We’re not looking around the room and saying there’s a bunch of new faces who weren’t here. We’ve retained a lot of the same players so we feel that’s going to help us.”
The Golden Knights traded veteran forward Reilly Smith to Pittsburgh for a third-round draft pick but the rest of the top three lines, led by Conn Smythe Trophy winner Jonathan Marchessault and leading playoff scorer Jack Eichel, as well as the top three defensive pairs and goaltender Adin Hill, all return.
“I feel like this group is ready to go out and compete hard to try and get another chance at it,” Cassidy said.
The team will hold a special ceremony prior to the start of Tuesday’s contest to raise the Stanley Cup banner in T-Mobile Arena. Players will enter the arena on a special gold carpet where fans will be given gold pompoms.
“It should be a great atmosphere,” Eichel, who had two goals and three assists in the final preseason tune-up, said. “Obviously, every night in T-Mobile is special but it will be a real cool one having the banner raised. Then it’s onto business. I think after that happens, turn the page and start building.”
Eichel was asked about the difficulty of trying to repeat as Stanley Cup champions.
“I don’t think we’re thinking about that now,” he said. “You know, it’s a long season. A lot of steps as a team you need to take to get there. It’s just important for us to get off to a good start this season.”
Seattle finished fourth in the Pacific Division with 100 points in just its second season and earned the first wild-card spot in the Western Conference. The Kraken then knocked off reigning Stanley Cup champion Colorado in seven games in the first round of the playoffs before losing to the Dallas Stars in seven games in the second round.
Center Matty Beniers and left wing Jared McCann led the way for the Kraken. Beniers scored 24 goals and had 33 assists to win the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie while McCann finished with a team-best 40 goals and 30 assists.
Seattle coach Dave Hakstol, a finalist for the Jack Adams Award that is awarded annually by the NHL Broadcasters’ Association to “the NHL coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team’s success,” felt the Kraken, who lost 2-1 in Game 7 to the Stars, made good progress in just their second year of existence. Seattle went from 60 points in its inaugural season to 100 in Year 2.
“We have to keep growing, that’s No. 1,” Hakstol told mynorthwest.com when asked what the next step for his team is. “You really learn a lot in playoff time. That’s when you really learn the true ability, the true character, the true mental capacity of individual players, as a staff, as a team.”
Vegas won the season series with Seattle, 3-1, last season outscoring the Kraken, 14-8, in the process. Seattle’s only win came in Las Vegas, 4-2 on Nov. 25, 2022.
–Field Level Media
