McCrimmon has known Craig since he was 15. Craig played center for Brandon of the Western Hockey League from 1998-2003, when McCrimmon was owner and GM. Craig served as captain his last two seasons.<\/p>\n
Craig went on to play 198 games in the NHL and 711 in the American Hockey League, captaining three different AHL teams over nine seasons, winning the Calder Cup with Lake Erie in 2016. He played under coaches like Tortorella, Jared Bednar and John Hynes. Thinking ahead to a potential coaching career, he kept a journal of experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always marvel at the fact he was an American Hockey League captain for nine different seasons, which just speaks to the leadership that he has,\u201d McCrimmon said.<\/p>\n
Craig has been with Vegas since the beginning. He served as an assistant for the Golden Knights\u2019 first six seasons, working under Gallant, DeBoer and Cassidy, hoisting the Cup in 2023. Then he spent the past three seasons as coach of Henderson, the Golden Knights\u2019 AHL affiliate based in a Las Vegas suburb, an important part of his development.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights hope Craig can become another Bednar, who rose from the AHL and won the Cup with the Colorado Avalanche in 2022, or Jon Cooper, who rose from the AHL, won the Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2020 and 2021, and won the Jack Adams this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re fortunate we\u2019ve been able to develop our own head coach,\u201d McCrimmon said. \u201cThat\u2019s not very common, quite frankly, and we\u2019re glad that we\u2019ve been able to keep him in our organization and have him lead our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Craig has built-in knowledge and relationships. He knows what he\u2019s getting into.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been here nine years,\u201d Craig said. \u201cI understand the standards and the culture of this organization, and I\u2019m proud to lead it and represent it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights will keep their identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve coached it,\u201d Craig said. \u201cI\u2019ve lived it. In Henderson, we ran similar systems. Our players know it. They believe in it, so there\u2019s going to be a seamlessness in that transition. There will be some tweaks, but I\u2019m excited to get with the group and put my stamp on them while continuing what\u2019s been built here over the last few years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights will keep striving to win.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis team\u2019s been built through standards since Day One, and those standards aren\u2019t going to change,\u201d Craig said. \u201cYou talked about winning the Stanley Cup or competing for the Stanley Cup. That\u2019s the standard that is in this organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs for expectations, we\u2019re going to go about our business day in and day out with the goal in mind to continue to build, stack, get better each and every day, so that we have an opportunity when the calendar flips in mid-April to compete for the trophy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McCrimmon has known Craig since he was 15. Craig played center for Brandon of the Western Hockey League…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-715550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}