Then, three days after losing to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final, they promoted Ryan Craig. Although the 44-year-old has never been an NHL head coach, he has been with the Vegas organization from the start, spending six seasons as an NHL assistant and three as coach of Henderson of the American Hockey League.<\/p>\n
“This team’s been built through standards since Day 1, and those standards aren’t going to change,” Craig said. “You talked about winning the Stanley Cup or competing for the Stanley Cup. That’s the standard that is in this organization.<\/p>\n
“As for expectations, we’re going to go about our business day in and day out with the goal in mind to continue to build, stack and get better each and every day so that we have an opportunity, when the calendar flips in mid-April, to compete for the trophy.”<\/p>\n
Vegas’ returning players include forwards Jack Eichel<\/a>, Mitch Marner<\/a>, Mark Stone<\/a>, Tomas Hertl<\/a>, William Karlsson<\/a>, Ivan Barbashev<\/a> and Brett Howden<\/a>; defensemen Shea Theodore<\/a>, Noah Hanifin<\/a>, Brayden McNabb<\/a> and Rasmus Andersson<\/a>; and goalies Carter Hart<\/a> and Adin Hill<\/a>.<\/p>\n Forwards Pavel Dorofeyev<\/a>, Keegan Kolesar<\/a> and Colton Sissons<\/a>\u00a0left this offseason, along with defenseman Kaedan Korczak<\/a> and goalie Akira Schmid<\/a>. But the Golden Knights added forwards Victor Olofsson<\/a> and Marc Gatcomb<\/a>, and defenseman Parker Wotherspoon<\/a>, and have players rising through the system.<\/p>\n Dorofeyev led Vegas in goals in each of the past two seasons, scoring 35 in 2024-25 and 37 in 2025-26. Olofsson had 29 points (15 goals, 14 assists) in 56 games for Vegas in 2024-25, then had 31 points (13 goals, 18 assists) in 78 games with the Colorado Avalanche and Calgary Flames last season.<\/p>\n “We wanted to add someone who has a history of being able to score goals, which Victor does,” McCrimmon said. “We had him, so we know the player. We liked more about his game, then and now, than just the fact that he’s a shooter, but he brings that skill set to our game. He’s responsible. He’s a smart player, so I think he’ll find a good spot in our lineup.”<\/p>\n Kolesar (1,418) ranks second in franchise history in hits behind McNabb (1,469). Gatcomb had 192 hits in 49 games for the New York Islanders last season and was first on the team in hits per 60 minutes (23.30). McCrimmon said Gatcomb and center Nic Dowd<\/a>\u00a0probably give the Golden Knights two-thirds of the identity they want for their fourth line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Then, three days after losing to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final, they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-830571","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\/830571","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=830571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}