Kristen Shilton is a national NHL reporter for ESPN.
Apr 22, 2024, 07:00 AM ET
Sixteen wins. That’s all a team needs to hoist the Stanley Cup.
For some clubs, achieving the feat takes decades. For the Vegas Golden Knights, it took six years.
Vegas secured the first Cup victory in franchise history last spring by downing the Winnipeg Jets, Edmonton Oilers and Dallas Stars en route to overwhelming the Florida Panthers in a five-game Final that Vegas controlled from the start.
At times, the Golden Knights made earning those 16 wins look easy. But will Vegas’ playoff run appear as effortless as it attempts to repeat as Cup champion?
Only eight teams in NHL history have won the Cup in consecutive years. Just two (the Pittsburgh Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning) have accomplished that in this millennium.
This has been a different season for the Golden Knights. Whereas last year Vegas entered the playoffs after a powerhouse regular season (as the Western Conference’s top seed), this time around the Golden Knights battled their way to a late berth and barely approached the 100-point mark. Vegas has toggled between dominant and docile. Its identity hasn’t always been clear — except when it comes to pushing the envelope.
Vegas did just that, chasing after prized skaters at the trade deadline and landing Noah Hanifin and Tomas Hertl for exactly this time of year. What sort of impact will they have on the Golden Knights’ chances to go back-to-back? What do the numbers say about Vegas now compared to last season? And what do players and executives around the league have to say about this year’s squad — and the challenge before them of winning a second Cup?
What the analytics say about Vegas’ chances
The numbers may not lie, exactly. But they don’t always tell the whole truth, either.
That’s the case here when comparing this season’s Golden Knights to the team that hoisted the Stanley Cup last June. On paper, Vegas appears nearly identical to that championship squad.
Let’s break it down:
The 2022-23 Golden Knights averaged 3.26 goals per game (14th), 2.74 goals against per game (22nd), had the 18th-ranked power play (20%), 19th-best penalty kill (77%), were ninth in goal differential (+42), seventh in scoring chances per game (15.1) and eighth in expected goals differential (53.8%), with a collective save percentage of .911 (seventh overall). Vegas finished the season with 111 points and was first in the Pacific Division.
Most of Vegas’ figures in 2023-24 stack up similarly — with a couple of outliers. This season’s team averaged 3.24 goals per game (13th), 2.98 goals against per game (22nd), had the 19th-ranked power play (20%) and the 15th-best penalty kill (80%). Those numbers trend close year-over-year.
The notable differences this season were in goal differential (+21, 12th overall), expected goals (52.1%, 13th) and scoring chances per game (15.6, 14th). Vegas’ goaltending struggled more this season than last as well — the Golden Knights had a collective save percentage of .902 (10th overall), were 20th in goals saved above expectations and 11th in goals against.
That data suggests Vegas should have fared better this season than being the eighth seed in the Western Conference. But this season has revealed two distinct versions of the Golden Knights: one starting the season, and one finishing it.
Vegas opened 2023-24 with an 11-0-1 record and by mid-December had lost consecutive games in regulation just once. The Golden Knights didn’t truly dip until going 1-5-0 from around Christmas into their Winter Classic dud against Seattle on Jan. 1. It was a poor omen for Vegas, though. The Golden Knights never recaptured the dominance they displayed to start the season.
Things got worse after the All-Star break.
Since mid-February, Vegas is averaging 3.44 goals against per game (23rd), allowing 30.5 shots per game (19th) and their goal differential has tanked (-2 overall). Those defensive issues have spotlighted the goaltending problems, particularly from Adin Hill, who has gone 5-8-0, with an .877 save percentage and 3.73 goals-against average.
Vegas is prone to trading opportunities off the rush, ranking 19th in rush scoring chances per game, while giving up the 10th most in the league. The Golden Knights were also 18th in cycle scoring chances, meaning Vegas could be exposed in the playoffs by a team that scores consistently off the rush or has a structure taking away the Golden Knights’ rush attack.
If it weren’t for Vegas’ strong start, the overall numbers would be trending further from where the Golden Knights perched a year ago in most categories. Injuries have once again played a role in Vegas’ season, but its trade deadline additions — specifically Hanifin on the blue line and Anthony Mantha up front — have helped soothe some of what’s ailed it at 5-on-5 and special teams.
The Golden Knights went 11-5-1 since the March 8 deadline passed, and that’s been mostly without their other highly prized acquisition, Hertl, who just debuted in April following February knee surgery.
Logan Thompson has also rebounded in that post-deadline stretch, going 7-2-0 with a .924 save percentage and 2.26 goals-against average. That bodes well for him as Vegas’ potential starter going into the first round over Hill, who had a memorable playoff run last year as the Golden Knights’ unexpected No. 1 in net.
The real question now is: Which Vegas will we see in the postseason? The elite-looking squad that could dominate in all three phases? Or the more vulnerable group that’s susceptible to long stretches of mediocre performance?
Let the real games begin.
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2024 NHL playoffs: The chase for the Stanley Cup is on
Emily Kaplan sets up the chase for the Stanley Cup as the NHL’s second season gets underway.
What the league says about Vegas — and the difficulty of going back-to-back
Perhaps the place to start when it comes to the Golden Knights’ bid for a consecutive title is the difficulty that comes with winning back-to-back championships. The most recent team to do it was the Lightning in 2020 and 2021.
“It was very challenging for I’d say both,” said Seattle Kraken forward Yanni Gourde, who was part of those Lightning teams that won two in a row. “The first was in the bubble, and the bubble was very challenging mentally. It was a lot that first year. The second year, you’re back to regular hockey in the playoffs with the crowd and traveling and all that stuff. They each felt very different in their own way.”
Kraken defenseman Brian Dumoulin, who won back-to-back Cups with the Pens in 2016 and 2017, voiced a similar sentiment to Gourde’s in terms of a team’s mentality. He said winning a Stanley Cup comes with a natural sense of accomplishment, but with the notion it could work one of two ways for a team.
It can serve as the motivation to win a second in a row. Or it could work against a team because there might be some players who were satisfied with their first championship and may not push as hard to go for another one.
Another point Dumoulin raised was how teams that have won a Stanley Cup typically receive more attention and come with fewer questions.
Before a team wins a Stanley Cup, it faces questions about if it is good enough to win it all. Once the team wins, though, it is no longer a secret. It’s now about how does the team continue to win while knowing everyone is trying to figure out ways to not only beat it, but have the answers over a seven-game series if it gets to that point.
“I think it’s like that in the regular season too, putting yourself in a position to win, [trying to get] home-ice advantage, especially with a team like Vegas,” Dumoulin said. “They’re always good at home just like we were in Pittsburgh. … It gets kind of harder and harder to even play in the regular season that following year too, because you have a target on your back. That’s definitely a factor.”
Practically every conversation around the Golden Knights’ title defense starts with how they returned 20 players from last year’s championship team. It’s a group that ranges from reigning Conn Smythe winner Jonathan Marchessault to All-Stars such as Jack Eichel and Alex Pietrangelo to key depth players such as defensive pairing Nicolas Hague and Zach Whitecloud.
Last year saw the Golden Knights win the Pacific Division and the Western Conference to gain home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. This season, however, they enter the playoffs as a No. 8 seed.
That’s not to say lower seeds cannot pull off upsets. It happened twice in the opening round of last year’s playoffs when the wild-card Florida Panthers upset the top-seeded Boston Bruins, and the then-defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche were ousted by the Seattle Kraken.
“I think the biggest thing is how many good teams there are,” Dumoulin said. “Obviously, with the salary cap not going up, teams are spending to the cap. It’s almost every team that has a good quality team and the difference in that first-round game, it’s no easy matchup. It’s going to be a battle no matter who they play.”
Dumoulin’s point about the number of teams that could challenge for the Stanley Cup because they are spending to the cap has merit. Cap Friendly’s data shows the Nashville Predators are the only Western Conference team in a playoff spot with more than $1 million in projected cap space. The next-closest team is the Winnipeg Jets, with less than $500,000 in cap space.
The Golden Knights are among those teams that had no cap space entering the postseason.
Even with their cap limitations, the Golden Knights were extremely active entering the trade deadline. Moving captain Mark Stone to long-term injured reserve was one of the moves that allowed them to free up the necessary space to get Hanifin, Hertl and Mantha.
Part of what has allowed Vegas to have success over the past few years is its ability to assimilate new players. They’ve done it with Eichel, Pietrangelo, Stone and Ivan Barbashev, among others, over the last few years.
But how difficult is it to welcome new faces to a team that’s already good? Especially when that team is trying to win a second Stanley Cup in a row?
Gourde said it starts with how ingrained a team’s culture is within the dressing room. He said that often served as a blueprint to help players mesh with their new teammates.
“When we had a new guy who walked in, he knew what was expected,” Gourde said. “He knew what was needed out of each and every one of us. It was kind of the unwritten rule that this was the standard, that this was the culture and that’s what it was. Each guy that jumped into our lineup in those years was willing to do that and were also willing to go above and beyond to win games.”
Dumoulin said he was interested to see what the Golden Knights would look like once they have their full complement of players. He recalled the last time the Kraken played the Golden Knights in late March. The Golden Knights won 3-1 — and that was without Hertl, Pietrangelo and Stone.
Vegas won last season by relying on its depth. It’s what allowed the Golden Knights to navigate their injuries this season. And Gourde is among those who believe that depth could once again prove vital in the postseason.
“Their fourth line — the way they played,” Gourde said of the Knights’ depth advantage. “The way they switched momentum in games. I thought they pushed teams out, and if your fourth line does that, it gives a lot of success to the other lines that come in. All of sudden, they’re facing a third line that’s been in their zone for a minute because they just grinded a shift through that fourth line who was just all over. That’s the game within the game. It’s those details of setting the next line up.”
Gourde would know. And if the Knights can keep leveraging that depth advantage, they could be playing hockey well into June again this year.
Why he could win: Olson is a late replacement for Acuna as the home team’s representative at this year’s Derby. Apart from being the Braves’ first baseman, however, Olson also was born in Atlanta and grew up a Braves fan, giving him some extra motivation. The left-handed slugger led the majors in home runs in 2023 — his 54 round-trippers that season also set a franchise record — and he remains among the best in the game when it comes to exit velo and hard-hit rate.
Why he might not: The home-field advantage can also be a detriment if a player gets too hyped up in the first round. See Julio Rodriguez in Seattle in 2023, when he had a monster first round, with 41 home runs, but then tired out in the second round.
2025 home runs: 36 | Longest: 440 feet
Why he could win: It’s the season of Cal! The Mariners’ catcher is having one of the greatest slugging first halves in MLB history, as he’s been crushing mistakes all season . His easy raw power might be tailor-made for the Derby — he ranks in the 87th percentile in average exit velocity and delivers the ball, on average, at the optimal home run launch angle of 23 degrees. His calm demeanor might also be perfect for the contest as he won’t get too amped up.
Why he might not: He’s a catcher — and one who has carried a heavy workload, playing in all but one game this season. This contest is as much about stamina as anything, and whether Raleigh can carry his power through three rounds would be a concern. No catcher has ever won the Derby, with only Ivan Rodriguez back in 2005 even reaching the finals.
2025 home runs: 24 | Longest: 451 feet
Why he could win: He’s big, he’s strong, he’s young, he’s awesome, he might or might not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. This is the perfect opportunity for Wood to show his talent on the national stage, and he wouldn’t be the first young player to star in the Derby. He ranks in the 97th percentile in average exit velocity and 99th percentile in hard-hit rate, so he can still muscle the ball out in BP even if he slightly mishits it. His long arms might be viewed as a detriment, but remember the similarly tall Aaron Judge won in 2017.
Why he might not: His natural swing isn’t a pure uppercut — he has a pretty low average launch angle of just 6.2 degrees — so we’ll see how that plays in a rapid-fire session. In real games, his power is primarily to the opposite field, but in a Home Run Derby you can get more cheapies pulling the ball down the line.
2025 home runs: 20 | Longest: 479 feet
Why he could win: Buxton’s raw power remains as impressive as nearly any hitter in the game. He crushed a 479-foot home run earlier this season and has four others of at least 425 feet. Indeed, his “no doubter” percentage — home runs that would be out of all 30 parks based on distance — is 75%, the highest in the majors among players with more than a dozen home runs. His bat speed ranks in the 89th percentile. In other words, two tools that could translate to a BP lightning show.
Why he might not: Buxton is 31 and the Home Run Derby feels a little more like a younger man’s competition. Teoscar Hernandez did win last year at age 31, but before that, the last winner older than 29 was David Ortiz in 2010, and that was under much different rules than are used now.
2025 home runs: 16 | Longest: 463 feet
Why he could win: If you drew up a short list of players everyone wants to see in the Home Run Derby, Cruz would be near the top. He has the hardest-hit ball of the 2025 season, and the hardest ever tracked by Statcast, a 432-foot missile of a home run with an exit velocity of 122.9 mph. He also crushed a 463-foot home run in Anaheim that soared way beyond the trees in center field. With his elite bat speed — 100th percentile — Cruz has the ability to awe the crowd with a potentially all-time performance.
Why he might not: Like all first-time contestants, can he stay within himself and not get too caught up in the moment? He has a long swing, which will result in some huge blasts, but might not be the most efficient for a contest like this one, where the more swings a hitter can get in before the clock expires, the better.
2025 home runs: 23 | Longest: 425 feet
Why he could win: Although Caminero was one of the most hyped prospects entering 2024, everyone kind of forgot about him heading into this season since he didn’t immediately rip apart the majors as a rookie. In his first full season, however, he has showed off his big-time raw power — giving him a chance to become just the third player to reach 40 home runs in his age-21 season. He has perhaps the quickest bat in the majors, ranking in the 100th percentile in bat speed, and his top exit velocity ranks in the top 15. That could translate to a barrage of home runs.
Why he might not: In game action, Caminero does hit the ball on the ground quite often — in fact, he’s on pace to break Jim Rice’s record for double plays grounded into in a season. If he gets out of rhythm, that could lead to a lot of low line drives during the Derby instead of fly balls that clear the fences.
2025 home runs: 19 | Longest: 440 feet
Why he could win: The Athletics slugger has been one of the top power hitters in the majors for three seasons now and is on his way to a third straight 30-homer season. Rooker has plus bat speed and raw power, but his biggest strength is an optimal average launch angle (19 degrees in 2024, 15 degrees this season) that translates to home runs in game action. That natural swing could be picture perfect for the Home Run Derby. He also wasn’t shy about saying he wanted to participate — and maybe that bodes well for his chances.
Why he might not: Rooker might not have quite the same raw power as some of the other competitors, as he has just one home run longer than 425 feet in 2025. But that’s a little nitpicky, as 11 of his home runs have still gone 400-plus feet. He competed in the college home run derby in Omaha while at Mississippi State in 2016 and finished fourth.
2025 home runs: 17 | Longest: 442 feet
Why he could win: Chisholm might not be the most obvious name to participate, given his career high of 24 home runs, but he has belted 17 already in 2025 in his first 61 games after missing some time with an injury. He ranks among the MLB leaders in a couple of home run-related categories, ranking in the 96th percentile in expected slugging percentage and 98th percentile in barrel rate. His raw power might not match that of the other participants, but he’s a dead-pull hitter who has increased his launch angle this season, which might translate well to the Derby, even if he won’t be the guy hitting the longest home runs.
Why he might not: Most of the guys who have won this have been big, powerful sluggers. Chisholm is listed at 5-foot-11, 184 pounds, and you have to go back to Miguel Tejada in 2004 to find the last player under 6 foot to win.
CINCINNATI — Cincinnati Reds right fielder Jake Fraley was activated from the 10-day injured list on Saturday.
He had injured his right shoulder while trying to make a diving catch June 23 against the New York Yankees.
An MRI revealed a partially torn labrum that will eventually require surgery. Fraley received a cortisone shot and will try to play through it for the rest of the season.