Three Decisions That Could Define Vegas for Years

The Golden Knights didn't just miss the playoffs last spring. They missed them the hard way—going 16–27 in one-goal games, a 37% win rate in close contests that told you everything about a team that could generate offense but couldn't protect a lead when the margin shrank to nothing. And then, in the final ten games of the season, they went 7–3 and looked like a different organization entirely. That's the cruelest part of this offseason. Vegas didn't stumble into irrelevance. They found something right at the end, and then systematically dismantled the people and pieces attached to it.

Start with Dorofeyev. Nineteen goals, traded to the Rangers in June. On a team where Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner, and Mark Stone are the marquee names, Dorofeyev's production looked like a complementary line item—until you have to replace it. Eichel's 58 points in 41 games last season is genuinely elite production, and Stone's 44 points in just 32 games underscores how dangerous this team can be at full health. But that trio has also been inconsistent in availability. Dorofeyev played 47 games and gave you 19 goals with reliability. That kind of dependable secondary scoring is harder to replace than it looks on a spreadsheet, and right now Vegas has no obvious internal answer. Tomas Hertl and Ivan Barbashev are capable contributors, but neither profiles as a natural heir to that goal-scoring role.

Then there's the goaltending situation, which has gone from a concern to something closer to a structural emergency. Akira Schmid was traded to Florida and has since signed a two-year extension there—he's gone. Michael Hutchinson retired in late July. Carter Hart is the only goaltender on this roster with meaningful playing time, which means Vegas enters the 2026–27 season one Hart injury away from genuine crisis. This isn't a depth chart with a thin second option. This is a depth chart with no second option. The backup market tightened considerably over the summer, and every week that passes without a signing is a week closer to training camp with a problem that doesn't solve itself.

And then there is Tortorella. This is the decision that will age most visibly, one way or the other. He was not retained in late July after guiding Vegas through that 7–3 finish and bringing them within two wins of a playoff spot. He expressed disappointment over the decision, which is worth noting—coaches who feel they left something unfinished rarely keep quiet about it. History is full of organizations that let go of the right coach at the wrong moment: teams that confused a late surge with a fluke rather than recognizing it as proof of concept. The 2025–26 Kings, the mid-2010s Senators, the Blues before they finally committed to their process—franchises that cycled through coaches during transition windows and paid for it in lost development time. Vegas may have made the right call. But the burden of proof now falls entirely on whoever walks through that door next.

My declaration is this: the Golden Knights are not a bad team. Eichel and Marner and Stone, when healthy and together, form one of the more dangerous top-six groups in the Western Conference. Shea Theodore anchors a defense that, at its best, is legitimate. The bones are real. But the three decisions made this offseason—trading the leading goal-scorer, failing to replace the backup goalie, and cutting the coach who engineered the late surge—have introduced compounding risk into a roster that needed stability above all else. Any one of those decisions might be defensible in isolation. Together, they represent a bet that a new coaching voice, a reshaped roster, and Carter Hart staying healthy can all break right simultaneously. That's a lot of variables to align before September 29, when Chicago comes to T-Mobile Arena and the 2026–27 season begins its own accounting.