Vegas Wins the 2023 Stanley Cup; Marchessault Awarded With Conn Smythe Trophy

AP

In their 6th season of existence, the Vegas Golden Knights win their first Stanley Cup. Team owner, Bill Foley’s prediction came true and as crazy as that is, what is even crazier is the fact that Vegas has been so good in their first 6 seasons. They were the best team throughout the playoffs and they didn’t win this championship by chance. They closed the season out last night with a 9-3, Game 5 rout.

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They only needed 5 games to take down the Florida Panthers, who seemed that they may be the “team of destiny”. Their season of destiny wasn’t fulfilled, but they did have an incredible run. Vegas outmatched them at practically every turn in the series. They outscored the Panthers by nearly 4 goals in every win. They were the dominant team. Jonathan Marchessault received the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He had 25 points during the playoffs and found the net 13 times. Jack Eichel finished the playoffs as the playoff points leader with 26. Eichel didn’t score a single goal in the Finals, but was a great team player with 8 assists in the winning effort. Mark Stone had 24 points during the playoffs and ran up that point total with a hat trick in the series-deciding game.

In the playoffs, in a lot of cases you are only as good as your goalie. The Knights had superb goalie play from Adin Hill during the postseason. If he played for the entire playoffs, you could have easily made the argument for him winning the Conn Smythe. Hill was the team’s 4th choice at goalie and that makes it even more remarkable. The Knights were riddle with injuries at goalie and Hill stepped up in the biggest games of the season. He only allowed 12 goals in 5 Finals games and had a save percentage of 92.3. Pretty good for a 4th choice.

The season is over and momentum for Vegas will carry into the next season. Connor Bedard and his development will be the big storyline heading into the next season, but I’m interested to see the shakeup of the offseason. It will be interesting to see which teams improve and which teams fall back a little bit and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on all of it. Congrats to the 2023 Stanley Cup Champion Vegas Golden Knights.

Yacs