Graney: Golden Knights all-in again with trades at deadline

Always advance, never retreat, is right.

It’s apparently not just a popular moniker for the Golden Knights. It’s pretty much how they approach the trade deadline.

And it’s too bad if your favorite team doesn’t.

The Knights addressed some obvious needs this week in a lineup that again has been hit by injuries and, regardless, isn’t playing well.

They haven’t been consistent since beginning the season 11-0-1.

They’re fighting things right now.

But they added great skill at forward and defense, players who were among the best in hockey available to be moved. They did what has become commonplace around these parts at this point in a season — whatever management believes is needed to win at the highest of levels, it does. It’s as aggressive as all heck.

It has worked lately.

They won a Stanley Cup.

Love the attitude

“We wanted to help our team,” general manager Kelly McCrimmon said Friday. “Our recent play hasn’t been good enough. We know that. We’ll fix that … I think when you have a room full of champions that it’s easy for us to want to improve the talent and continue to add and try to help and try to put our team in a position to achieve that again.”

You can’t help but love such an attitude if you’re a Knights fan.

You can’t help but despise it if you’re not. And plenty do.

It has been no different across social media the past 48 hours or so after the Knights added forwards Anthony Mantha from the Capitals and Tomas Hertl from the Sharks and defenseman Noah Hanifin from the Flames. No different in the feeling of others that the Knights have again bamboozled their way into contention for another title.

The question shouldn’t be why the Knights treat the deadline as such, but why other teams don’t. The Knights have some serious evidence that their way works. You know, that shiny Cup they skated around T-Mobile Arena with in June.

You’re going to hear the same complaints about stashing players on long-term injured reserve to use salaries to acquire other players at the deadline. Those injured players then can be activated for the playoffs, when there is no salary cap.

Listen. Knights captain Mark Stone has a lacerated spleen. It hurts just to type those words. It’s all within the rules, anyway. Don’t like them, change them.

The Knights had the draft picks to make such moves work. They were able to have teams retain salary within them. Others aren’t forced to make such deals with the Knights. Nobody is holding someone’s arm behind their back to answer McCrimmon’s calls.

I have no idea what San Jose was thinking by sending someone of Hertl’s stature and two third-round picks and retaining 17 percent of his salary, but it did.

Maybe this all catches up with the Knights one day. Maybe trading multiple first-round picks and some seconds and thirds eventually makes for forgetful times. It’s just not the mindset of a team built to win now.

Championship windows in sports, for the most part, have an expiration date. Who’s to say how long this one will remain open for the Knights? You can believe moving on from the draft capital they did this week — which included two first-rounders — will ultimately create doom and gloom and losing records. Maybe.

Win immediately

It probably won’t be any time soon. Hertl is signed through 2029-30, and Hanifin is expected to sign a long-term deal with the Knights.

“Contrary to popular belief, we don’t go after every good player,” McCrimmon said. “We go after good players we like, good players we identify, good opportunities we identify, and this week we were able to acquire each of the three players that we wanted to bring into our organization.

“It doesn’t always work that way. You can do the exact same amount of work. You can have a similar process and sometimes trades don’t unfold for one reason or another. This year, we feel really good that it did.”

Worry about the future then. The window doesn’t stay open forever.

Ed Graney, a Sigma Delta Chi Award winner for sports column writing, can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com. He can be heard on “The Press Box,” ESPN Radio 100.9 FM and 1100 AM, from 7 to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on X.