(Photo Credit: SinBin.vegas Photographer Brandon Andreasen)
Last season the Golden Knights finished the regular season with the third most points in the NHL. They stormed through the Pacific, going 19-5-2 and won the division by five points. In all areas, Vegas is considered a top contender heading into the 2025-26 season. However, that wasn’t good enough for the Daily Faceoff to add VGK to their list of the five franchises that improved the most this offseason.
That departures list for Vegas essentially includes stalwart defenseman Alex Pietrangelo, too, as his hip problems would require multiple major surgeries to solve and could prevent him from continuing his playing career altogether. Shouldn’t the prognosis be rather grim for Vegas, then? No. Not when you’ve added Marner, who is coming off a 102-point season. –Matt Larkin on DailyFaceoff.com
The NHL outlet called it correctly about the impactful loss of veteran defenseman Alex Pietrangelo. The alternate captain leaves a major hole at the 1A defensive spot, which the team is hoping for Noah Hanifin or Shea Theodore will emerge as a legitimate top blueliner. The singular reason the Daily Faceoff selected VGK as much improved was their headline-stealing acquisition of Mitch Marner. The deal changed the look of one team and added another weapon for another.
Of course, we’ll be inundated with the ‘who will shoot the puck‘ narrative, but the Golden Knights’ offense will be among the league’s best. Which is why they are unqualified to be on any list of improved clubs. Vegas was the top seed in the Pacific last season and added one of the NHL’s most dynamic All-Stars. Currently, William Hill has the second-highest odds (+170) to win the Pacific Division.
The Marner deal changed the Toronto Maple Leafs’ forecast, not the Golden Knights. VGK’s expectations were high last year, and they are as elevated going into 2025-26. Maybe not so much in Southern Ontario.
We’ll obviously miss him. He’s a great friend and a great teammate. We’ll just keep it moving. A lot of changes, but feeling excited about the guys we brought in. Guys are going to have to take some steps, but I think that’s a good thing, a good problem to have, so really looking forward to it. –Auston Matthews, TOR captain to Sportsnet.ca
Toronto’s top center didn’t come out and say it, but he hinted at a possible dip this season without Marner. Phrases like ‘guys are going to have to take steps’ and words like ‘changes’ could be construed as a lack of belief in the current Maple Leafs roster. And who wouldn’t temper expectations after losing a 102-point showstopper?
He’s one of the best playmakers in the NHL, he’s a two-time first-team all-star, and in the past five seasons he’s seventh in league-wide scoring and first in takeaways. He also lands in an environment perfectly suited to remedy his problems performing under pressure in the playoffs: a Sun Belt team full of players who won a Stanley Cup in 2022-23. The Golden Knights were already a division champion last season, and now they add a Hall-of-Fame-grade forward to the mix. The entire Western Conference should be afraid. –Larkin on DailyFaceoff.com
So, have the Golden Knights improved? When a team adds a talent like Marner, of course, they did. Nonetheless, they haven’t resurrected their team like the Ducks and Sharks possibly have. While VGK is listed, they truly don’t belong. Unless their offseason decisions lead to an abundance of postseason scoring.
The real Jb
Im very interested to see how the defence corp moves and operates without Pietrangelo in the mix. It will be fun to see Marner slay in the western conference.
ThG
All players have hockey sticks, they all can shoot the puck, the NHL has two seasons. The nearly every one makes the playoffs and the second season. The playoffs. The toughest overall team usually wins season two. The panthers are team to beat again.
Emmanuel
They win 3 in a row and they are immortal.
knights fan in minny
Morelli Off to the KHL
Emmanuel
Re VGK “improving”:
I think they moved ‘talent’ from the back end to the front.
They will tread water but they were near the top in points.
Thats PROBABLY because they play in a weak division nevertheless they will likely be in the top 10 in points but thats the regular season, they will probably only win one round because TALENT wise I would group them in the 6-10 slot overall, same as last year.
Donald J Trump
lib tards end up looking like delusional idiots that they are, tds brain farts fill their molecular being
n New York, a court revealed that a leading citizen had cooked the books by inflating questionable figures without any support in reality. Moreover, his wild overvaluation was widely viewed as motivated by his self-aggrandizement. The final reported figures are so absurdly inflated that they were rejected in their entirety. In the end, he was off by over half a billion dollars.
That man is Judge Arthur Engoron.
After a New York appellate court unanimously threw out Engoron’s absurd half-a-billion-dollar judgment and interest against President Donald Trump, the irony was crushing. It was Engoron who seemed, as he characterized Trump witnesses, as having “simply denied reality.” It made his notorious reliance on an assessment of Mar-a-Lago as worth between $18 million and $27.6 million seem like good accounting.
NY APPEALS COURT THROWS OUT $500M PENALTY AGAINST TRUMP IN LETITIA JAMES CIVIL CASE
In the end, he could not get a single judge to preserve a single dollar of that fine.
Donald J Trump
the most vivid image of Engoron came at the start. He indicated that he did not want cameras in the courtroom, but when the networks showed up, Engoron took off his glasses and seemed to pose for the cameras.
It was a “Sunset Boulevard” moment. We only need Gloria Swanson looking into the camera to speak to “those wonderful people out there in the dark!” and announcing “all right, [Ms. James], I’m ready for my close-up.”
US APPEALS COURT BLOCKS TRUMP CONTEMPT PROCEEDINGS ORDERED BY BOASBERG
The close-up was not a good idea, and, on appeal, it was perfectly disastrous. The court found little legal or factual basis for his fine. The purported witnesses not only did not lose a dime, but they testified that they made money on the loans and wanted new loans with the Trump administration. That did not move Engoron. From the start, he was speaking to those “wonderful people out there.”
You did not have to go far. In both the civil and criminal trials of Trump in New York, there was a carnival atmosphere in the street outside the courthouse. It was really not derangement as much as delirium. Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James had injected lawfare directly into the veins of New Yorkers. Pledging in her campaign to bag Trump (without bothering to name any crime or violation), James was elected based on her recreational rather than legal appeal.
Trump’s civil fraud penalty was ‘obviously excessive,’ Emily Compagno saysVideo
Yet, James could not have succeeded if she had not had a judge willing to ignore reality and cook the books on the fines. She needed a partner in lawfare. She needed Engoron.
Donald J Trump
Even for some anti-Trump commentators, the judgment was impossible to defend, and some acknowledged that they had never seen any case like this one brought in New York.
TURLEY HAILS TRUMP’S ‘TREMENDOUS VICTORY’ AFTER CIVIL FRAUD PENALTY TOSSED, BLASTS ‘GROTESQUE’ USE OF NY LAW
Judge David Friedman gave Engoron a close-up that would have made Swanson wince. He detailed how the underlying law “has never been used in the way it is being used in this case – namely, to attack successful, private, commercial transactions, negotiated at arm’s length between highly sophisticated parties fully capable of monitoring and defending their own interests.”
He accused Engoron of participating in an effort clearly directed by James at “ending with the derailment of President Trump’s political career and the destruction of his real estate business.”
Donald J Trump
the most vivid image of Engoron came at the start. He indicated that he did not want cameras in the courtroom, but when the networks showed up, Engoron took off his glasses and seemed to pose for the cameras.
It was a “Sunset Boulevard” moment. We only need Gloria Swanson looking into the camera to speak to “those wonderful people out there in the dark!” and announcing “all right, [Ms. James], I’m ready for my close-up.”
Yet, James could not have succeeded if she had not had a judge willing to ignore reality and cook the books on the fines. She needed a partner in lawfare. She needed Engoron.