The Vegas Golden Knights spent last season stacking up wins, finishing 39-26-17, taking the Pacific Division and Western Conference titles, and landing just two victories shy of another Stanley Cup. With that kind of résumé, you wouldn’t expect many entries on a worst-decisions list.
But Bleacher Report included the Golden Knights and former head coach John Tortorella on its Worst Decisions of 2025-26 list, and the reasons trace back to a short, messy stretch that carried a lot of weight.
One of the defining moments came in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final, when Tortorella used a coach’s challenge on a possible goalie interference call. The game was tied 2-2 at the time, but the Carolina Hurricanes scored 25 seconds later on the power play after the failed challenge. Mark Stone tied it a few minutes later, but the visitors still won in overtime to even the series before it shifted back to Carolina.
That was only part of the story. Vegas signed Carter Hart to a deal on October 24, 2025, and his first NHL action in over a calendar year got off to a rough start.
He went 6-3-3 in his first 12 games with a .871 SV% and 3.00 GAA. Those numbers came from early December to January, though, and Hart looked much different after coming back to finish the season under Tortorella, who was hired on March 30.
The 27-year-old went 6-0-0 with a .930 SV% and 1.66 GAA, which earned him the starter’s role for the playoffs.
Hart then carried the Golden Knights through the first two rounds with an 8-4 record, then helped Vegas sweep the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference Final. He allowed just seven goals in 12 periods in that series.
But once the Stanley Cup Final started, things unraveled. Hart gave up four goals in every game, and the questions about Adin Hill’s availability started coming up with the series tied 2-2.
Tortorella never budged, sticking with Hart all the way through a 3-0 shutout loss on home ice on June 14 that ended both the season and his run behind the bench.
The second-round draft pick Vegas lost was tied to another mistake. After the Golden Knights beat the Anaheim Ducks, Tortorella skipped the mandatory post-game press conference after being upset at the league and their on-ice decisions. The league responded by taking away the franchise’s second-round pick in 2026 for not following the rules.
If Vegas had won the Cup, those decisions might have faded into the background. Instead, the Golden Knights fell short, and Tortorella was gone before the late June draft. In just three months, his choices ended up shaping far more than a single playoff series.
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Golden Knights Face Real Doubt After Quiet Offseason
The Golden Knights went into the offseason with a familiar challenge: keep the core intact without losing ground to the rest of the Western Conference. Instead, their summer was defined more by restraint than splash. Vegas re-signed Victor Olofsson and moved Pavel Dorofeyev rather than committing to a pricey extension, but beyond those decisions there was not much to point to as a major shift, which is part of why The Hockey News slotted the team 24th in its 2026 offseason rankings.
For a team that has built a reputation on staying aggressive, that quiet approach has created some unease, especially with divisional rivals trying to get better and a new head coach taking over without previous NHL head coaching experience. Still, the Pacific Division is viewed as a soft landing spot compared with the leagues tougher pockets, and that alone may keep Vegas in the mix even if the offseason felt more cautious than convincing. [Read more 🡒]
Golden Knights Still Have A Fleury Standard No Goalie Has Touched
Marc-Andre Fleurys time in Vegas may be long over, but his imprint on the Golden Knights still shows up every time the franchise looks back at its goalie ledger. He remains the standard for saves, save percentage, goals against average, shutouts, and games played, a reminder of just how quickly he became the defining netminder of the teams early years and how hard it has been for anyone else to match that run.
Adin Hill is the closest active goalie to threatening some of those marks, but injuries and uneven stretches have made the climb harder than it once looked. Carter Hart is another name worth watching in the bigger picture, and the Golden Knights will keep weighing how to build the position next, whether that means developing a young goalie internally or going after a proven starter through trade. [Read more 🡒]