Going through changes: Golden Knights can't run it back after coming within two wins of the Stanley Cup

On the night of Sunday, June 14, after losing Game 6 to fall to the Carolina Hurricanes in the Stanley Cup Final, Vegas Golden Knights coach John Tortorella wasn’t sure if he wanted to return next season.

By the next morning, he had made his decision. The veteran coach informed Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon he wanted to stay in a meeting at the franchise’s headquarters in Summerlin.

McCrimmon had to explain that it wouldn’t be an option, and that the team was instead promoting Henderson Silver Knights coach Ryan Craig to his first NHL head-coaching role.

“I have pretty strong feelings of what I think of the organization, where it needs to go next,” McCrimmon later explained.

Consider Craig stepping in for Tortorella and becoming the Golden Knights’ fifth coach in the team's 10-year history the first domino to fall this offseason. There are many more to follow.

McCrimmon and Co. maintained an enviable amount of continuity in the season following their first two Stanley Cup Final runs, in 2017 and 2023, but that’s not going to repeat this time around.

The roster is too veteran-laden and expensive, pressed up against the salary cap, to keep everyone.

“It’s the nature of the business that there’s always some change,” McCrimmon said. “That’s what we’re digging into now.”

Locked into eight-year, near-maximum contracts, 29-year-old forwards Jack Eichel and Mitch Marner are set as the centerpieces of the Golden Knights for years to come.

Captain Mark Stone, 34, has a year left on his own eight-year deal he signed with the club in 2019 and remains just as valuable. He solidified his desire to keep playing in Vegas coming off what he described as arguably the best season of his career.

Any of the other forwards could wind up on different teams next year.

Pavel Dorofeyev, the team’s leading goal scorer the past two seasons, is a restricted free agent, meaning he could draw an offer sheet from another team that the Golden Knights would be hard-pressed to match.

Vegas is always aggressive in the trade market, and Dorofeyev could represent an attractive piece. Ditto for fan favorite and “Original Misfit” William Karlsson, who’s on a cheap, expiring contract and a subject of constant trade rumors — ones McCrimmon has disputed.

The outlook forecasts similarly on the other side of the ice. The top defensive pair of Shea Theodore and Brayden McNabb may not be quite as untouchable as Eichel and Marner, but it would be a shock if they weren’t back for their 10th seasons.

The second pair of Noah Hanifin and Rasmus Andersson will likely bolster them, but they both had disappointing Stanley Cup Final performances that contributed to the loss.

The 29-year-old Andersson is now a free agent, though McCrimmon splurged on adding him before this year’s trade deadline in a costly deal with the Calgary Flames. It’s unlikely both sides agreed to the move without an expectation of a long-term deal.

Andersson expressed a desire to return next season and atone for a Stanley Cup Final showing he personally graded harshly. Hanifin was benched late in Game 6, but McCrimmon revealed an undisclosed injury that he was playing through that would have kept him out for weeks if not months of the regular season.

Needing to cut salary to retain players like Dorofeyev, trade speculation is swirling for defenseman Hanifin and has considered declining center Tomas Hertl — a prized pair acquired at the 2024 trade deadline.

Vegas will almost certainly at least explore making that type of salary-dumping deal with goalie Adin Hill, who was benched at the end of this season in the first year of a six-year, $37.5 million contract.

In net is where Vegas must improve the most after ranking at the bottom of the NHL all season by all goaltending metrics. Hill’s usurper, Carter Hart, pulled the Golden Knights up for most of the playoffs but then had a historically poor Stanley Cup Final, becoming the first goalie ever to give up at least four goals in five consecutive games.

Hart should be back on the second year of a more cost-effective two-year, $4 million contract but hasn’t proven he can be a reliable No. 1 starter.

Some rumblings have surfaced that three-time Vezina Trophy winner Connor Hellebuyck, whom many consider the best goalie in the world, could be traded from the Winnipeg Jets.

There’s no concrete evidence so far, but Vegas almost always pursues the biggest-name players available. Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin has already requested a trade and submitted a three-team list of preferred landing spots with the Golden Knights included.

But those types of acquisitions would require giving up a lot of current difference-makers, especially with the Golden Knights’ cupboard of future draft assets barren from years of moves.

Even though he’s just been elevated, Craig has among the strongest ties to the history of the organization. McCrimmon hired him to his first assistant-coaching role going into the Golden Knights’ inaugural season, and Craig went on to work under all four coaches in franchise history.

He named Tortorella as his single biggest influence, largely because he initially broke into the NHL as a player under him with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2006.

Now Craig will be looking to finish what Tortorella came so close to achieving in winning the Stanley Cup, albeit with a different cast of characters.

“You have to build your team, and this team has been built from standards since Day 1, and those standards aren’t going to change,” Craig said. “You talk about winning the Stanley Cup or competing for the Stanley Cup.”

This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.