Graney: Knights GM likes what team has built amid impressive start

It’s the price of being a good organization. Of being a consistent winner. The Golden Knights fit the definition of both.

Each year brings turnover to the roster, with those on expiring contracts often getting rewarded elsewhere. It means new faces in the room.

Those who have arrived for the Knights (7-3-1) this season have impressed through 11 games despite some pretty weird home-and-road splits.

Translation: The team — which hosts Utah on Saturday night — hasn’t lost at T-Mobile Arena and yet is still looking for its first win away from it.

More opportunity

Moving on from certain players isn’t always popular with fans. Such has been the case with the Knights over eight seasons now, but none of it has altered this fact: General manager Kelly McCrimmon more than knows what he’s doing. The man can build a championship team.

“You need to react to (roster turnover) and you need to almost embrace it,” McCrimmon said. “It’s not just about new players coming in. It’s also about returning players with more opportunity.

“If expansion taught us anything, players with more opportunity than they had previously can sometimes really move forward and take positive steps, which we’ve seen.”

McCrimmon is talking about players like Brett Howden, Keegan Kolesar and Pavel Dorofeyev, skaters that can complement an excellent core. Of new players like left wing Tanner Pearson, who already has three goals and seven points, and right wing Alexander Holtz, who has a five-game point streak for the first time in his career.

Left wing Cole Schwindt, 23, was plucked off waivers in October and has three assists in eight games. Right wing Victor Olofsson showed promise after signing in July as a free agent, scoring three goals in four games before suffering a lower-body injury.

Michael Amadio. William Carrier. Anthony Mantha. Chandler Stephenson. Jonathan Marchessault. It’s not like the Knights didn’t lose top-end talent from last season. Those five forwards were also paid handsomely elsewhere and count a combined $19.85 million against their new teams’ salary caps.

The combined cap hit of Pearson, Holtz, Schwindt and Olofsson is $3.544 million. And their production hasn’t been far off from what the Knights’ former players have totaled with their new teams.

“Coming to a group with 23, 24 guys that all have the same goals in common is really good,” Pearson said. “To where I started here (on a professional tryout), I didn’t put expectations too high. You just have to keep doing the stuff that got you here in the first place. Keep looking at those things.”

The Knights were unlike many Stanley Cup champions in that they had little roster turnover after winning it all in 2023. But they were fairly sure where things stood with Stephenson and defenseman Alec Martinez at last season’s trade deadline, so they acquired center Tomas Hertl and defenseman Noah Hanifin.

They made sure their roster was prepared for the future.

“We’re a really good organization with really good leadership and really good coaching,” McCrimmon said. “This is a good place for players to come. There is opportunity, which is what every player wants.”

Best line ever

McCrimmon also believes the Knights have never had a better top line than their current one of center Jack Eichel, captain Mark Stone and left wing Ivan Barbashev. And that the team’s power play has never been better.

He sees the Knights’ blue line continuing to pitch in offensively. And McCrimmon thinks that while being eliminated in the first round last season was humbling, the organization is now seeing the benefits of players getting more time to train last summer.

He also thinks the team is still just as motivated as ever.

“Something to prove,” McCrimmon said. “When we won the Cup, we were coming off a season where we didn’t make the playoffs, so we had something to prove. To me, that has always served our organization well. It has always been part of our DNA. I like that part.”

He also likes this team. The new faces. The returning ones. Likes the core and those around it.

“It’s a long season,” he said. “You always have to continue to get better.”

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.