Last season gave the Vegas Golden Knights one of the strangest stat lines in the league: fewer wins than losses, a head coach shown the door, a Pacific Division title anyway, and a trip to the Stanley Cup Final on top of it.
John Tortorella was a huge part of that wild run. He arrived and closed the regular season with a 7-0-1 stretch, then helped push Vegas all the way to the Final.
But the ride came with baggage. His media antics cost the Golden Knights a second-round draft pick, and the questionable choices he made during the Stanley Cup Final ultimately led to him being 86'ed.
Now the thinking for 2026-27 is pretty straightforward: lean hard into what Vegas already does well and turn it into a weapon.
That weapon lives in the high-danger area.
The Golden Knights finished fourth in the NHL with 718 high-danger chances last season, and they converted at a strong clip, too. Their team shooting percentage from that zone was 20.3%, which ranked eighth leaguewide. The forwards were even better, finishing seventh at 20.4%.
That lines up with another important number: offensive zone time. Vegas logged the fourth-highest rate in 2025-26 at 42.3%, and a lot of that pressure showed up late in games. The Golden Knights spent real time wearing teams down, especially in the third period, which helped explain why they were so efficient there.
The names behind that production matter. Tomas Hertl had 113 high-danger chances, the fourth-most in the NHL, and he can use that area like a cheat code. Mark Stone, with his size, can do damage there in a different way, whether it’s through deflections or rebounds.
But there’s a catch. Vegas also spent too many nights digging out of early holes in 2025-26.
Consecutive goals against showed up often, and some of those games turned into blowout losses. Others were salvage jobs that still ended with overtime or shootout losses, leaving points behind.
So the goal for 2026-27 is clear: start fast, attack early, and get to that high-danger zone before the game settles in. If Hertl gets going early, Vegas is in business. If the Golden Knights can draw penalties and activate that part of their game sooner, they can take control before the opponent has a chance to settle in.
That approach would require a shift in style, though. Vegas wasn’t always sharp enough in the forecheck last season, and that helped create those slow starts. Making the adjustment could mean some uncomfortable changes, but that’s the price if the Golden Knights want to turn one of their biggest strengths into a real cheat code.
In Other News...
Golden Knights Trade Still Sparks Debate About What Vegas Gave Up
When Vegas landed Max Pacioretty from Montreal on Sept. 10, 2018, it looked like the kind of bold move that fit the Golden Knights early identity: aggressive, win-now, and willing to pay for proven scoring. The price was steep from the start, with Nick Suzuki, Tomas Tatar and a 2019 second-round pick heading to the Canadiens, but Pacioretty did provide offense in his time with the Golden Knights before the next chapter of his career took him to Carolina in 2022.
What has kept that deal in the conversation is how the other side has aged. Suzuki has grown into Montreals captain and top-line center, won the Selke Trophy, and become a central figure in the Canadiens recent success, which naturally keeps the trade under a brighter light whenever Vegas and Montreal are measured against each other. For the Golden Knights, it is one of those transactions that still invites a familiar debate about value, timing and how much a contender is willing to surrender for immediate help. [Read more 🡒]
Golden Knights Face A Worrying Truth Behind Their Aging Core
The Golden Knights reached the Stanley Cup Final not long ago, but the conversation around their long-term outlook has turned a lot less celebratory. Steven Ellis latest look at the organizations prospect pipeline has Vegas sitting 31st in the league, a reminder that years of chasing established talent have left the cupboard thin behind the NHL roster.
For a team built so aggressively through trades, the payoff has been obvious in the present and the cost is starting to show in the future. The concern is not just the age of the core already in place, but the lack of draft and prospect capital to ease the transition when the next wave arrives, with goaltending drawing particular scrutiny as one of the areas where the pipeline looks especially bare. [Read more 🡒]