Golden Knights vice president has the NHL cred to drive the new Las Vegas team

By Jesse Granger

Sunday, April 9, 2017 | 2 a.m.

The Golden Knights are only months away from getting a full roster of players and completing construction on one of the best facilities in the league, but the path to this point hasn’t been easy.

The franchise championed by majority owner Bill Foley, who has little to no experience in professional sports, has been piloted behind the scenes by a man with nearly two decades of NHL experience.

Murray Craven, 52, has skated an NHL rink more times than 99 percent of players in league history. He played 1,071 games over 18 years in the NHL for six different teams, and he has been Foley’s right-hand man since long before the Las Vegas hockey team had a name.

“Looking at what we have now, it wasn’t that long ago that we were just crossing our fingers, hoping that we’d get to this day,” Craven said. “All of a sudden we’re here, and it feels like we’ve been here all along.”

Last August, he received his official title with the Golden Knights — senior vice president — but he is involved with nearly everything the team does, from architecture to player scouting.

“He’s doing a lot for us,” said team president Kerry Bubolz. “He’s wearing a lot of hats for us, and he’s invaluable from that perspective.”

Craven’s current headgear is a hard hat.

From the beginning, he has overseen development of the Golden Knights’ $30 million practice facility, expected to finish in late August. It suits him, as his retirement from the NHL led to dabbling in commercial real estate and construction.

“I think it really helped,” Craven said. “First off, it gave me a chance to watch my kids grow up. Secondly it gave me the ability to learn business and how to deal with people and different personalities.”

The hockey side of things is the easy part for Craven. He scored 266 goals and racked up 493 assists during his career with the Red Wings, Flyers, Whalers, Canucks, Blackhawks and Sharks.

“A lot of people don’t understand what a storied NHL career he had,” Bubolz said. “This guy wasn’t a fourth-line player. He was a legitimate player, and to have that knowledge is exciting.”

Craven’s time as a player provided him with a wealth of experiences that have prepared him for his role with the Golden Knights.

“I’ve played in some great organizations and some that weren’t as strong, and you learn every team you go to,” Craven said. “When you play for the Philadelphias of the world that seem to do everything right, and then you go to a team like Hartford that is on its way out of the city — as soon as I walked into the situation in Hartford, it was quite a shock.”

Craven played two seasons with the Whalers, just four years before they left Connecticut to become the Carolina Hurricanes.

“He’s going to be really instrumental when we try to build out the youth hockey and adult hockey, utilizing his relationships in the marketplace,” Bubolz said. “As we try to build an alumni network, we will utilize all of his relationships in the league.”

With the Golden Knights, Craven faces a new challenge: guiding a franchise through the process of entering the league as an expansion team.

“I think that the first year or so has gone remarkably well,” Craven said. “I think we’ve been fortunate that the mistakes we’ve made, people have forgiven us. Perhaps we could have done some things differently, but we were new. There was no blueprint for how to do it in Las Vegas.”