{"id":595978,"date":"2026-06-10T22:27:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/595978\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T22:27:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:27:21","slug":"building-through-the-draft-didnt-produce-this-2026-stanley-cup-finalist-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/595978\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Building through the draft\u2019 didn\u2019t produce this 2026 Stanley Cup finalist \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most NHL general managers love the phrase \u201cbuilding through the draft.\u201d One who doesn\u2019t is Kelly McCrimmon, the mastermind of the Vegas Golden Knights, who currently sit two wins shy of their second Stanley Cup championship.<\/p>\n

Ever since the Golden Knights entered the league in 2017 (at which point McCrimmon was an assistant GM), they\u2019ve done things differently.<\/p>\n

They weaponized the expansion draft, for example, acquiring assets in exchange for the assurance that they would take specific players, rather than others. Those trades landed them Marc-Andr\u00e9 Fleury and William Karlsson, among others, who would become integral parts of the squad\u2019s run to the Stanley Cup Final that spring.<\/p>\n

In a league where virtually every expansion team of the last 30 years had started from the bottom, the Golden Knights were competitive from Day 1.<\/p>\n

To stay competitive, the team has been ruthless with its trades.<\/p>\n

If a player gets paid too much, they have no problem trading him \u2014 no matter how beloved he is to the fans.<\/p>\n

Of the 13 first-round draft picks the franchise has owned (including this year\u2019s), only one of those players is still with the organization and none of them have played a full season in a Golden Knights jersey. Every promising prospect is dealt for win-now pieces.<\/p>\n

In fact, the only Vegas-drafted players to have suited up for the Golden Knights in these playoffs are Pavel Dorofeyev and Kaedan Korczak.<\/p>\n

This aggressive management style has led the Golden Knights to sustained success. In their nine seasons, they have made the Stanley Cup Final three times and the Conference Final five times.<\/p>\n

The Carolina Hurricanes, the Golden Knights\u2019 opponent in the current Stanley Cup Final, are built in a somewhat similar way. They haven\u2019t outright neglected the draft, but a number of their key players came through free agency and trades. <\/p>\n

The NHL is famously a copycat league, so it\u2019s inevitable that teams will try to replicate, at least in some way, the success of this year\u2019s finalists. But what does it take to actually pull it off?<\/p>\n

Factors of building a winning NHL team in 2026Climate<\/p>\n

Seven consecutive Stanley Cup Finals have featured at least one team from a warm-weather city. That\u2019s far from the only factor that makes players want to play for a given team, but it\u2019s growing increasingly clearer that players want to be in destination markets.<\/p>\n

Who wouldn\u2019t want to drive their golf cart to the rink<\/a> in their shorts and flip-flops in February?<\/p>\n

Facilities<\/p>\n

When Rick Tocchet\u2019s coaching contract with the Vancouver Canucks expired, he declined to sign an extension. It was widely speculated that the Canucks being the only team in the league without a practice facility was part of his decision \u2014 and he hinted at it<\/a> on the Donnie and Dhali radio show.<\/p>\n

It may seem minor to outsiders, but coaches and players alike want the best of the best when it comes to facilities, travel and every other area where the team can choose to spend extra money.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Utah Mammoth practice and training facility in Sandy, UT on Saturday, September 13, 2025. | Photo by Hunter Dyke, courtesy of Utah Mammoth Taxes<\/p>\n

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will deny it until his last breath, but taxes weigh into players\u2019 decisions on where to play. But the players themselves are starting to acknowledge<\/a> that it does, in fact, matter.<\/p>\n

For example, per PuckPedia\u2019s tax calculator<\/a>, someone earning the 2024-25 league-average salary of $3,817,293 would pay a hair less than $2 million in taxes in Toronto, keeping less than half of his money. But if that player were to sign in Dallas for the same cap hit, he\u2019d pay a little less than $1.37 million.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the big-name players, who make a lot more money than that, the difference is even more stark.<\/p>\n

The NHL currently has six teams in no-tax states, and at least one of those teams has played in the Stanley Cup Final in seven consecutive seasons.<\/p>\n

Attention<\/p>\n

Gone seem to be the days of NHL players wanting the spotlight.<\/p>\n

In an era where every fan has a platform to make a viral observation, players are becoming more cautious in what they say and do \u2014 especially in markets where hockey is the biggest show in town.<\/p>\n

And when given the chance, many of them are leaving for quieter markets.<\/p>\n

Golden Knights forward Mitch Marner is a prime example of that. He spent nine years as the scapegoat of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the most media-crazed club in the sport. When he finally got the autonomy to choose his destination, he opted for a city where he isn\u2019t even among the top 50 most famous people.<\/p>\n

Quinn Hughes and Matthew Tkachuk have done the same, and with the recent reports<\/a> that Dylan Larkin wants out of Detroit, a trend seems to be forming.<\/p>\n

Competitiveness<\/p>\n

All the other factors weigh into players\u2019 decisions on where to sign, but they\u2019re all moot if the team isn\u2019t competitive. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why a high-tax, cold-weather, high-attention place like Edmonton can retain some of the best players in the world, while a low-tax, warm-weather, low-attention place like Nashville struggles to make the playoffs year after year. <\/p>\n

Team management has little to no control over most of the factors, but it has all the control over this one. If you want to attract high-end hockey players, build a winning environment.<\/p>\n

\"\"Vegas Golden Knights right wing Mark Stone hoists the Stanley Cup after the Knights defeated the Florida Panthers 9-3 in Game 5 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Finals Tuesday, June 13, 2023, in Las Vegas. The Knights won the series 4-1. | AP <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most NHL general managers love the phrase \u201cbuilding through the draft.\u201d One who doesn\u2019t is Kelly McCrimmon, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5129],"tags":[149,5317,5,1442,4,74,39,5316],"class_list":["post-595978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vegas-golden-knights","tag-golden-knights","tag-goldenknights","tag-hockey","tag-news-feed-national","tag-nhl","tag-vegas","tag-vegas-golden-knights","tag-vegasgoldenknights"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116728171564757014","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}