Motivational Monday: The Plan, Roadmap, and Courage for the Golden Knights to Repeat

Happy Monday everyone! Foul-mood Friday left some of you feeling down over the weekend so let us start the week on the right foot. Here is a motivational quote.

All you need is the plan, the roadmap, and the courage to press on to your destination. – Earl Nightingale

The Vegas Golden Knights have a tough road ahead to repeat. It will be a short summer that started with an epic parade, a speech for the ages, parties up and down the Vegas strip, and a day with the Stanley Cup in the location of each player’s and coach’s choosing.

Below is the plan, road map, and courage to press on to the ultimate destination of repeating for the Golden Knights.

The plan: General manager Kelly McCrimmon has done a great job in keeping the bulk of the roster intact. Reilly Smith was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins to free cap space to re-sign Ivan Barbashev. Phil Kessel is the only outstanding free agent from the 2022-23 opening-day roster.

Jack Eichel said Bruce Cassidy was the reason the Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup. Eichel credits Cassidy for holding all players accountable and the way he changed the team’s game. The Golden Knights used five-starting goalies throughout the regular season and miraculously still finished on top of the Western Conference. Credit Cassidy for bringing a goalie-friendly system to the Golden Knights.

The Roadmap: The NHL regular season can be grueling and the margin can be extremely thin from being comfortably in the playoffs vs. being on the outside looking in. The Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken will face off in both franchises’ first-ever “Winter Classic.”

Other key moments in the schedule are the banner-raising game against the Kraken on October 10. Connor Bedard makes his first visit to T-Mobile Arena on October 27. The first long road trip will be a good test for the team. The Golden Knights will visit Washington, Montreal, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Dallas in mid-November. The Edmonton Oilers make their one and only visit to T-Mobile Arena on February 6. You can bet that game will have a playoff atmosphere filled with plenty of animosity.

The Golden Knights have a stretch where they play seven games on the road over 17 days starting in late March that could determine where the team finishes in the Pacific Division.

The courage to press on to your destination: We have heard all the narratives a million times now about the Golden Knights. Early on the story was about a bunch of misfits who were no longer wanted. After the Golden Knights missed the playoffs, the team had a chip on their shoulder. Finding motivation was not hard.

How can a team that just won the Stanley Cup stay hungry and motivated? Is this misfit narrative fading? What about the chip on the team’s shoulder?

Perhaps motivation can be found from those that feel the Golden Knights circumvented the salary cap. Elliotte Friedman suggested there was an investigation by the NHL of possible cap circumvention by the Golden Knights.

 “The NHL went hard at Vegas this time, in terms of investigating them and asking for the medical reports on Vegas.” – Friedman

There are still many feel that the NHL gifted the Golden Knights a competitive team from day one that helped the team win a Stanley Cup in season six.

There is plenty of motivation out there and the Golden Knights will find ways to transform the negativity into motivation as they try and repeat in season seven.