Golden Knights confident they’re good enough to win Stanley Cup

The Golden Knights experienced unexpected success in their first postseason. Last year brought heartbreak.

The team wants to go through something completely different during this playoff run. The Knights are healthy, prepared and confident entering their first-round series with the Chicago Blackhawks that begins Tuesday in Edmonton, Alberta.

They’re hopeful this is the year they lift the Stanley Cup.

“This team’s got a lot of firepower,” defenseman Nate Schmidt said. “A lot of depth in our forward group that I really thinks makes us more dangerous than we ever have been. I think we’ve got guys up and down our lineup that can score (and guys) up and down our lineup that can defend well.”

The Knights have one of the NHL’s deepest rosters after making a lot of additions in the past year. Defenseman Zach Whitecloud was called up from the American Hockey League. Defenseman Alec Martinez, goaltender Robin Lehner and forwards Chandler Stephenson, Nicolas Roy and Nick Cousins were acquired via trade.

The group helped the Knights earn the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference. The team scored five goals per game in the round robin, tops among playoff teams.

“We’ve worked each year to make our team better,” general manager Kelly McCrimmon said. “We feel that from a personnel standpoint, this is the best group that we’ve had in terms of the makeup of our roster and the depth that we have at different positions.”

All that’s left to do is make sure that talent translates to wins. The Knights also had a strong team last year when they lost in the first round to the San Jose Sharks. They were up 3-1 in the series, but lost Game 7 in controversial fashion.

Schmidt said the team learned from that experience and will be better this postseason for it.

“You’re not just going to walk back into the Stanley Cup Final,” Schmidt said. “It’s incredibly hard to get there. I think that our guys understand that and understand that last year we thought maybe you could just roll through a team once you’re up, and now we learned the valuable lesson that that’s not going to happen.”

Seeing Subban

The Knights will meet Malcolm Subban in the series less than six months after trading the backup goaltender to the Blackhawks.

McCrimmon said while he never expected to face Subban in the postseason so soon after the deal, he stands by his decision.

“We were just not comfortable yet that he was going to be what we needed,” McCrimmon said. “That’s not to say that he isn’t a tremendously talented young goaltender. He is.”

Subban had a .890 save percentage and 3.18 goals-against average at the time of the trade. The Knights got Lehner, who McCrimmon said was more equipped to help the team compete for a Stanley Cup this year.

“We did not feel that we had enough support behind Marc-Andre (Fleury),” McCrimmon said. “It’s a bit of a luxury to have two goaltenders of that caliber.”

Odds and ends

— McCrimmon said he’s talked to a number of candidates for the Henderson Silver Knights coaching position and has “narrowed that field.” He said he didn’t have a timeline for filling the position. The Knights’ previous American Hockey League coach, Rocky Thompson, left the organization and is expected to become an NHL assistant coach.

— McCrimmon said the Knights might loan some prospects to European teams to begin next season since the NHL and AHL will have delayed starts. The AHL hopes to start in early December, while the NHL hasn’t announced when its 2020-21 season will begin.

Contact Ben Gotz at bgotz@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BenSGotz on Twitter.