The Vegas Golden Knights

Pre-Golden Knights

The Vegas Golden Knights became the National Hockey League’s 31st franchise for the 2017-2018 season. To create their team, the Golden Knights would select one player from each of the other teams in the league, with the major caveat that each team was allowed to “protect” seven forwards, three defensemen and a goalie, along with a variety of other restrictions.

Given these restrictions, it would make sense for the Vegas Golden Knights to be an average team for a few years, considering they could theoretically only get each team’s eighth best forward, fourth best defenseman, or second best goalie. This was, surprisingly, not the case. Instead, the team found immense success with some absolutely standout players.

This graph shows the points of the top 8 players that the Golden Knights selected for the 4 years prior to the expansion draft. Some players only started playing in the NHL in the later years, which is why their lines start later on. Generally, you can see that these players had a range of points heading into the year, but for the most part were fairly average.

The Rise!

Into the 2017-2018 year, their first year for Vegas, you can clearly see all of these players' upwards trends. Some players were already trending upwards, others had a sharp upward curve. The most exceptional change was William Karlsson who showed drastic improvement. Another key player for Vegas in Jonathan Marchessault continued his strong upward trend. Nate Schmidt, Shea Theodore and Colin Miller are defensemen (defensemen typically score less than forwards) and even for them there's an obvious boost in points! It's easy to win when even you're D are scoring!

While we're only showing regular season statistics here, Vegas did so well in their first year that they made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals! Unfortunately, they lost in the Final round, but considering they were all a bunch of third-liners the year before, they had great success as a team!

Give 'em a chance!

One key factor into this newfound success for these players came from their increase in playing time, or Time on Ice (TOI). As you can see here, nearly all of these players received more ice time per game with Vegas than they had with their previous teams. Obviously, the more time on the ice, the more likely a player is to score goals. Maybe all these guys needed was a chance to show their stuff.

For the group of players clustered around 18 minutes per game, they coincidentally played on the same line! On the higher end, Nate Schmidt and Shea Theodore were Vegas' top two defensemen (the best defensemen usually end up playing tons of minutes).

and make the most of it!

However, it wasn't only that they were getting more playing time, but they were making the most if it too. This graph shows the relationship between ATOI/Game and points. Once again, there's a clear upward spike for most of the players' first year in Vegas. Maybe it was some newfound confidence, maybe it was getting to live in Las Vegas, but not only did each player get more ice time, but they were much more productive with it as well.

...and the Fall

Unfortunately, after their initial year with the Golden Knights, every one of these players had a drastic falling off. Much like their rise, Marchessault and Karlsson also had a pretty big fall. Some players got traded away, others remained fairly successful but never had the same level of domination. Regardless of where they went next in their careers, their first year in Vegas was certainly the most successful of all their careers!