The Golden Knights bucked recent trends of building a championship team but their success could be hard to emulate.
The is a copycat league when it comes to team building — and has been, even before the dawn of the salary-cap era. Traditionally, if a strategy to win the Stanley Cup worked for one team, you’ll frequently see others dissect that winning formula to see if there’s anything in it for them. Mostly, successful blueprints involve some version of drafting and developing elite internal talent, and then putting the finishing touches on the whole by tweaking around the edges.
” Ferraro believes the Vegas team-building philosophy can be traced right back to their first year when owner William Foley predicted the Golden Knights would win the Stanley Cup within six years, something no other NHL expansion team had ever accomplished. That put the plan in high gear right from the start. Advertisement “Vegas gamed the system; they worked it better than the other general managers,” said Ferraro.