Vegas is an interesting team. <\/p>\n
It clearly underachieved during the 2025-26 regular season, at least based on preseason expectations. <\/p>\n
Then, once the playoffs began, and especially after John Tortorella took over as the interim head coach, everything started to click into place, and they played up to expectations, reaching the Stanley Cup Final, where they lost to the Carolina Hurricanes. <\/p>\n
A very real outcome with this team in 2026-27 is that they may finish with more points in the regular season, but may not actually be a better team or go anywhere near as far in the playoffs. <\/p>\n
There is also a possibility that they simply end up with fewer points than the 95 they had this past season. <\/p>\n
It’s an older team with many veterans who tend to miss time each season. On top of that, they just lost one of their best young forwards when they traded restricted free agent Pavel Dorofeyev on draft night. <\/p>\n
There are some questions and concerns here, including a goaltending situation that was very inconsistent in 2025-26. Can Carter Hart play the way he did for parts of the playoffs over a full season? Does Adin Hill still have something left to offer as a potential starter?<\/p>\n
At some point, those questions in goal will catch up to them, especially with so many of their key players already on the wrong side of 30. <\/p>\n
How do the Golden Knights avoid getting worse?<\/p>\n
There is always the possibility that management has another blockbuster move in the works.<\/p>\n
It might be something that comes out of nowhere.<\/p>\n
It might be a pursuit of a big-name player already on the trade block.<\/p>\n
They do, after all, finally have some future draft pick capital again, and they always find a way to make the salary cap work.<\/p>\n
Could they get involved in the Connor Hellebuyck sweepstakes?<\/p>\n
Maybe the Dylan Larkin talks?<\/p>\n
You really cannot rule out anything with these guys, and the way the roster looks now likely won’t be how it looks by midseason or the 2027 trade deadline. That might be what they need to do to avoid a step backwards. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vegas is an interesting team. It clearly underachieved during the 2025-26 regular season, at least based on preseason…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-789262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}