Golden Knights closing in on a fourth divisional title is no small feat

Thirty-eight years have passed since the Edmonton Oilers last won the Pacific Division.

It’s been just as long for the divisional rival Los Angeles Kings, which last added a year to their divisional banner after the 1990-1991 season.  

The Vegas Golden Knights, meanwhile, appear imminently poised to claim the Pacific for the fourth time in eight seasons.

Vegas goes into tonight’s game hosting Edmonton at 7 p.m. at T-Mobile Arena with a seven-point lead over second-place Los Angeles in the Pacific with nine games left to play in the regular season.

The betting market and publicly available projection systems give the Golden Knights anywhere from a 96% to a 99% chance to reign as Pacific Division champions again after a one-year hiatus.     

A divisional title is not the achievement any team comes into an NHL season chasing — especially in this era of ring culture where clubs across all sports seem to be judged exclusively on their ability to win the ultimate prize — but it should celebrated nonetheless.

The Golden Knights’ rule over the Pacific ever since the franchise came into existence is remarkable.

There’s no better illustration of that than the fact that sides like the Oilers and Kings, which have so commonly been among the league’s glamour franchises over the last four decades, find themselves in such prolonged divisional droughts.

The Golden Knights’ impending 2025 Pacific coup is their greatest one since the initial 2017-2018 Golden Misfits season.  

They were as high as 200-to-1 to win the Pacific back then, per sportsoddshistory.com. That’s impossible to top.  

But this year’s team was no hulking menace coming into the season either.

In fact, some even questioned if the championship contending window was beginning to close after losing a handful of mainstays from every part of the roster — winger Jonathan Marchessault, center Chandler Stephenson, defenseman Alec Martinez and goalie Logan Thompson, to name a few.   

The Golden Knights drifted to as high as +450 (i.e. risking $100 to win $450) to win the Pacific coming into the season at sportsbooks, a third choice behind the Oilers and defending champion Vancouver Canucks.

That means their implied probability, after adjusting for the house’s hold, hovered around 15% to win the Pacific.

But this organization so frequently defies the odds, and that part of its nature apparently hasn’t faded despite a different roster makeup.  

It’s not as if this year’s journey to the top of the standings was a smooth ride. Watching Thompson put together the second-best season of any goalie in the league (behind Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck) in Washington after a trade request and ongoing spat with Vegas hurt.

It was extra painful as recently as a month and a half ago when Vegas went into a midseason swoon that saw it lose 11 of 14 games partly due to problems in the crease. In the middle of that downturn, Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy demanded “better play” out of goalies Adin Hill and Ilya Samsonov.

Few coaches in the league would be bold enough to call out their goalies in that manner, but Cassidy knows what he’s doing.

And he’s gotten results. Goalie play has been a driving factor of the Golden Knights’ current six-game winning streak that’s helped them pull away in the Pacific.

Samsonov only started one of those games but it was against the best opponent (the Tampa Bay Lightning) and he made 35 saves to outplay former Vezina Trophy winner Andrei Vasilevskiy in a 4-1 victory. The 28-year-old went down with an undisclosed injury ahead of Sunday’s game in Nashville, but Hill filled in for a second straight start on a back-to-back and showed no signs of fatigue.

He stopped 23 of the Predators’ 24 shots on goal in a 3-1 victory, leading the Golden Knights to a 3-0 road trip where they conceded only a total of five goals.   

 “That’s always going to give you a chance to win,” Cassidy said in summation of the trip.

Cassidy challenged the Golden Knights to make defense their identity coming into the season, and told them he expected the unit to be the best in the division. That’s happened throughout.

But it was largely because of a career year from franchise staple Shea Theodore over the first half of the season.  The 29-year-old was drawing dark horse Norris Trophy buzz before going down with an injury while playing for Team Canada in the 4 Nations Face-Off.

Theodore then missed 11 straight games, only returning for the aforementioned road trip, but the Golden Knights’ defense amazingly didn’t dip much without him.

Injuries have altered the forward group too.

William Karlsson, whose return coincided with the start of the current winning streak, has missed more time than ever before in his NHL career. The Golden Knights stayed afloat without him despite it appearing like they would need to rely on him more than ever before at the start of the year.

Karlsson came back, and then leading scorer Tomas Hertl immediately exited. Cassidy said Hertl was playing the best hockey of his career before getting hurt against the Lightning.

He’s already missed three games and will not be back for at least four more.

But when one player goes down or one unit falters, another has stepped up to provide for the Golden Knights. It’s been that way all season long.

“We’re trending really well,” Cassidy said. “We’re certainly closer to the top of the scale than the bottom, especially our overall game. We’re not only winning because we’re scoring. It’s not one thing. It’s not one line. It’s not one special team. It’s, I think, a little bit of everything.”   

Opposing, largely envious NHL fan bases have accused Golden Knights’ supporters of several transgressions over the years — most of them unfounded.

But there’s one characterization that’s hard to argue against: Golden Knights’ fans are spoiled.

They’ve enjoyed so much success that it’s natural to gloss over moments like a Pacific-title run in favor of looking forward to a postseason run.

The Golden Knights might make racking up divisional crowns look easy but their level of consistency is extraordinary. Generations of fans from their biggest rivals could begrudgingly attest to as much.

Make sure to enjoy the conclusion of what looks like yet another championship regular season.