The Vegas Golden Knights want what the Blues have — and they don’t plan on waiting 50 years to get it.
Team owner Bill Foley is chasing the Stanley Cup in a dead sprint. His passion is reminiscent of how Mike Shanahan and Jack Quinn once ran the Blues.
Those two signed Scott Stevens as a free agent when free agency existed in name only. They doubled down by signing Brendan Shanahan, only to lose Stevens in the process. They hired coach Mike Keenan when he was still under contract to the New York Rangers. They even landed The Great One, Wayne Gretzky, for a playoff push.
These days Foley is the NHL’s most zealous owner. The Golden Knights won the bidding for center Jack Eichel over Western Conference rivals like the Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche and Blues.
“Jack can change the game in the blink of an eye,” Golden Knights defenseman Alex Pietrangelo told reporters after the trade with Buffalo. “That’s an element you want on your team.”
The Golden Knights took some risk while spending power forward Alex Tuch plus forward prospect Peyton Krebs, a first-round pick, and a draft pick downgrade (trading a No. 2 for a No. 3) for a player headed toward disc replacement surgery.
The Buffalo Sabres wouldn't let Eichel have that procedure, which has never been done on star hockey player. Eichel dug in and forced the Sabres to trade him to a team willing to let him choose that medical course.
“There are certain players that we have aggressively gone after and tried to bring into our organization and Jack is one of those,” Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon said during a news conference.
If Eichel recovers fully and regains his old form, the Golden Knights could become an even tougher out in the playoffs.
“There are only a handful of guys in the world with game-breaking ability, when the game gets tight, that they can create something out of nothing,” Golden Knights coach Peter DeBoer told reporters. “There’s only a handful of guys that have that type of skill, and he is one of them.”
Eichel always seemed destined for the Golden Knights because, A) they were especially weak down the middle, and B) they do whatever it takes to get whatever they want.
Foley didn't accept his expansion team status coming into the league. He refused to follow the traditional franchise-building blueprint.
Rather than accumulate as many prospects and draft picks as possible during a long-haul buildup, the Golden Knights spent most of the future assets gained through the expansion draft to get immediate help.
They wanted to win right away. Sure enough, they reached the Cup Final in their first season and they’ve kept pushing hard ever since.
Even though they already had top-end winger Max Pacioretty, they added another one in Mark Stone.
Even though Gerald Gallant coached the Golden Knights to unprecedented early success, the team replaced him with DeBoer when the team lost some momentum.
Even though they already had Cup-proven goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, they acquired netminder Robin Lehner.
Even though they already possessed a strong defense, the Golden Knights wooed Pietrangelo from the Blues in free agency.
This is exactly how the Blues operated back in the early 1990s. Fans saluted the franchise’s commitment to winning, even if Shanahan and Quinn's frantic approach failed to produce deep playoff runs.
At least they were trying hard, right?
To get Pietrangelo under the salary cap, the Golden Knights had to give former Blues center Paul Stastny and his salary-cap hit to the Winnipeg Jets. Cap constraints forced them to give Fleury to the Blackhawks.
When their weakness at center predictably caught up with them during last season’s playoffs, the Golden Knights zeroed in on Eichel.
Along the way the Golden Knights have traded first-round picks in four straight years, emulating the live-for-today mentality of yesteryear Blues GM Ron Caron.
And unless the Golden Knights pull a Kucherov — leaving Eichel on long-term injured reserve until the playoffs, when salary-cap restrictions evaporate — they might have to subtract other players to accommodate Eichel's $10 million cap number.
(The Tampa Bay Lightning exploited that loophole to win last season’s Cup. Nikita Kucherov extended his recovery from surgery into the postseason, allowing the Lightning to deploy a loaded roster way over the cap limit. Somewhere out there in the Great Beyond, Shanahan and Quinn nodded in approval.)
The Golden Knights won’t worry about their potential salary cap crunch unless Eichel's recovery forces them to. In the meantime, they will operate as ambitiously as always.
Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. But the rest of the league should heed these words from Foley in his June 13, 2018 letter to Golden Knights fans:
“As I look forward I can assure each and every one of you that the entire Golden Knights hockey organization including myself is committed to improving next year and every year thereafter. We will never give up and never give in. The Knight always advances and never retreats.”
