The Ryan Craig era of Vegas hockey begins Tuesday night when the Golden Knights face the rebuilding Chicago Blackhawks in the teams’ season opener in Las Vegas.
Craig, who spent the past three seasons as head coach of the nearby AHL Henderson Silver Knights, will be the team’s third head coach in a six-month span. He replaces interim boss John Tortorella, who took over for the fired Bruce Cassidy on March 29. Despite guiding the Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup Final, where they lost in six games to the Carolina Hurricanes, Tortorella was not retained by the club.
The 44-year-old Craig, who played 198 games in the National Hockey League with Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh and Columbus, spent six seasons as an assistant for Vegas under Gerard Gallant, Peter DeBoer and Cassidy before taking the Henderson job two weeks after the Golden Knights won the 2023 Stanley Cup.
Craig inherits a veteran team led by Jack Eichel, captain Mark Stone, William Karlsson and Mitch Marner that has missed the playoffs just once in nine seasons and won the Pacific Division (39-26-17, 95 points) in 2025-26.
“I don’t think (Craig) is going to have to change a whole lot when we just came two games away from winning another Stanley Cup,” said the 34-year-old Stone, who inked a two-year, $18 million contract extension through 2029. “We like the way the team is built, we like where the team’s mindset is. Yeah, he needs to kind of get his message out there, but pretty confident in the ability of the guys in the room to take whatever message we get and run with it.”
Craig said, “We’re going to tweak some things. I believe in the way that we’ve played here. Our players believe in how we play here.”
Craig’s biggest test will be finding a way to replace the scoring output of forward Pavel Dorofeyev, who was dealt to the New York Rangers in June for a pair of first-round draft picks and a third-round pick. Dorofeyev led the team with 37 goals, including 20 on the power play, which ranked second in the league. He followed that up with 12 goals and four assists in 22 postseason games.
Still, Eichel, who helped lead the U.S. to a gold medal in the Winter Olympics and scored a Vegas-best 90 points, and Marner, who posted 24 goals and 80 points and was the team’s top postseason scorer with 29 points (10 goals), help give the Golden Knights plenty of firepower.
After losing to Carolina in the Stanley Cup Final it’s fair to say Vegas enters the season with a chip on its shoulder.
“I don’t think anyone’s forgotten,” Eichel said. “You don’t forget coming up two games short of winning the Stanley Cup.”
Chicago finished last in the Central Division (29-39-14, 72 points) and will start the season without its best player, center Connor Bedard (30 goals, 75 points in 69 games). Bedard underwent left shoulder surgery in early July and isn’t expected back until November.
The Blackhawks signed popular 37-year-old forward Patrick Kane, who helped lead Chicago to three Stanley Cup titles, to a two-year, $16 million free agent contract. Chicago also traded for defenseman Bowen Byram, who collected 11 goals and 31 assists with Buffalo last season.
Second-year head coach Jeff Blashill told the Chicago Sun-Times the moves to bring in veterans such as Kane and Byram will bring much-needed leadership into a young locker room.
“One of the goals that I wanted culturally is to build back our confidence and swagger,” Blashill said. “(Kane is) going to have a very good impact, and that’s before we start even talking about offensive production. … A number of our guys are in position to really take steps, and with additions, we’re just a deeper hockey team.”
Chicago opens the season with a three-game road trip that also includes stops at Utah on Thursday and Buffalo on Saturday before its home opener against the St. Louis Blues on Oct. 6.
