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Misfits forever: Newer players have embraced and upheld the Golden Knights’ original attitude

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(From left) Lehner, Stephenson and Martinez
AP Photo

When the Vegas Golden Knights played in the Stanley Cup Final in 2018, Chandler Stephenson was a fourth-line center for the opposing Washington Capitals, averaging 11 minutes per game and attempting three total shots in the series.

If the Golden Knights return to the Stanley Cup Final in 2021, Stephenson will be their first-line center, logging nearly double that amount of ice time and likely contributing more than three shots in each game.

Stephenson follows a long line of players who have thrived with the Golden Knights after being marginalized by their previous teams. Identifying talented players stuck in unfavorable situations and then maximizing their potential has emerged as one of the biggest reasons for Vegas’ continuous four-year stay near the top of the NHL.

Nowadays, mentioning the Vegas Misfits elicits nostalgia for the franchise’s memorable expansion-year postseason run. The attitude is considered long gone, save for when original Golden Knights William Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith share the ice.

But it shouldn’t be that way. Taking discarded parts from around the league and deploying them in new, successful ways is entrenched in the Golden Knights’ DNA, and there are traces of it all over this year’s team. The Misfit mentality lives on as Vegas once again chases a championship with the start of this year’s NHL Playoffs.

Separating someone like Stephenson from the Misfit moniker simply because he wasn’t on the team from the start is silly. He was a still-developing 25-year-old former third-round pick when the Capitals dumped him to the Golden Knights in December 2019 in exchange for a future fifth-round pick.

Stephenson arrived in Las Vegas with every bit as much to prove as current teammates like Karlsson and Marchessault did coming out of the expansion draft in the Golden Knights’ first season.

Being doubted is a common theme among the Golden Knights, one that can be found at every position group of the roster. Second-year Vegas defenseman Alec Martinez fetched a stronger trade return than Stephenson—a pair of second-round picks—when the Golden Knights acquired him from the Kings last year, but reaction to the swap was lukewarm at best. Martinez’s place was forever etched into NHL history with his series-winning goal in the 2014 Stanley Cup Final, but the consensus was that, at 32 years old, his best days were behind him.

Some thought Vegas was reaching by bringing in Martinez and hoping he would make a significant difference. But Vegas’ front-office duo of President of Hockey Operations George McPhee and General Manager Kelly McCrimmon saw something in Martinez and were proven correct, as they have been so regularly.

Martinez has served as a top-pair defenseman since coming to Vegas, helping to bring out the best in Shea Theodore, another original Misfit, and also excelling playing next to Alex Pietrangelo. Martinez has also contributed a career year offensively this season.

Martinez was far from done in his final years with the Kings; he just needed the right situation, like another key player who spent the past several years looking for it. No one ever really doubted goaltender Robin Lehner’s ability, but he bounced around on three teams in three years before getting traded to the Golden Knights a few days after Martinez.

Lehner was terrific at the end of the 2020 regular season through the bubble playoffs, earning the one thing that had always eluded him—a long-term contract—when the Golden Knights signed him to a five-year, $25 million deal during the 2020 offseason. Depending how Vegas manages its goalie situation in this year’s playoffs, with Marc-André Fleury coming off a resurgent regular season, Lehner could be a key player again. He would certainly be a fitting face at the forefront of a Vegas championship team—another player who found an unlikely home with the Golden Knights.

Although the name value of the roster has certainly increased since Vegas’ first season, it’s far from a collection of superstars and onetime can’t-miss prospects. Heck, Vegas’ best player and team captain, Mark Stone, has a history of being underestimated and disrespected as a former sixth-round pick. Even after establishing himself as an elite two-way forward, Stone was infamously snubbed in the rankings of the league’s top 50 players by its official video game heading into the 2019-2020 regular season.

Given their current rate of success and the annual level of interest they receive from free agents, the Golden Knights might one day become one of the glitzier, more star-laden teams in the league. But they’re not there yet.

This is still a team of disparate parts pieced together into a far greater whole. This is still a team of misfits.

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Case Keefer

Case Keefer has spent more than a decade covering his passions at Greenspun Media Group. He's written about and supervised ...

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