A new coach in Vegas usually gets a short leash. Ryan Craig may not even have reached the ice for his first NHL game behind the Golden Knights bench, and Rotowire already has him near the top of the pressure pile.
In Rotowire’s 32-coach ranking, Craig landed No. 3 with a score of 65. The study used a 100-point scale built around five categories: legacy/succession burden, goaltending volatility, win-now mandate, job security risk, and market/media scrutiny. Put together, those factors paint a clear picture of which coaches are walking into the brightest spotlight and the hottest seat.
Craig’s background inside the organization does give him some familiarity. He spent six seasons as an assistant head coach with Vegas before moving to the Henderson Silver Knights, where he served as head coach. Even so, the challenge ahead is obvious: he is taking over a team that made the Stanley Cup Final last season and still carries a veteran core with some Stanley Cup-winning holdovers.
That’s where the pressure really starts to build. The big question for Craig is how he manages a group that includes veterans who were disenchanted by the previous coach before the 2025-26 season began.
For a team that expects to win consistently, that’s not a small task. It’s the kind of situation that can turn a bench seat into a furnace fast.
The standard in Vegas is not subtle, either. The Golden Knights are one of the few NHL teams where anything less than regular winning can quickly become a problem.
The source of that urgency is easy to see in the way the organization has handled coaches before. John Tortorella took the Golden Knights within two games of a second Stanley Cup, but after some questionable decisions in the Stanley Cup Final and a second-round pick being lost, he was shown the door.
So what gives Craig the best shot at settling things down? The answer is the same one every coach wants, but few get enough of: wins.
In hockey, winning buys time. It can even buy years.
The source points to Jon Cooper in Tampa Bay as the model, noting that he won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021 and returned to the Final in 2022 before the Lightning fell to the Colorado Avalanche in six games.
For Craig, the formula is simple enough. Get results early, and the temperature drops. Fail to do that, and the heat behind the bench in Vegas only gets worse.
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Marners impact has also reached beyond the stat sheet and into the bigger conversation around the teams next step. With changes on the coaching staff and parts of the roster reshaped for the coming season, Vegas enters camp with a different feel, and Marner sits at the center of it. His playoff production, which led the league with 29 points, only sharpened the sense that the Golden Knights now have a player who can help define how far this version of the team can go. [Read more 🡒]