The Golden Misfits Trivia Quiz

Answer: 2000

The Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild were both approved on June 23, 2000. The sixteen years between then and the addition of the Golden Knights was the longest period of stability in the league since the 1967 expansion (6 teams). The deal was signed on June 7, 2016, after the NHL Executive Board met in Las Vegas and the Knights became the second ice hockey team in the American desert. It was 109F/42C that day.

The other desert team is the Arizona Coyotes, based near Phoenix. They moved there from Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1996.

Answer: Gerard Gallant

All four are from Canada but only Gerard Gallant is from PEI. A former NHL player himself, Gallant (pronounced gah-lont') went into coaching, eventually being named head coach of the Florida Panthers in 2014. After two good seasons 2016 was not so good and Gallant was left at the curb - literally.

He was fired after the Panthers lost a game to the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh, N.C. and told to find his own way home. He did, then found his way to Las Vegas in 2017. After the 2017-18 season he was named NHL Coach of the Year.

He was so seemingly unruffled, even during the playoffs, that Amber Dixon, a sportscaster for one of the Las Vegas television stations nicknamed him "Nonchalant Gerard Gallant".

Answer: New York Islanders

Like Coach Gerard Gallant, McPhee was himself a former NHL player. Afterwards he moved into management. Before the Islanders, he was general manager of the Washington Capitals for 17 years and hired most of the players who would be the Capitals' team for the 2017-18 season. Being general manager of the new Vegas team was both bad and good. He had no infrastructure to build on, there was no team culture, no knowledge of who the best and worst players were. But he had a chance to build a team from scratch, to decide who the first players would be, how they would look and much more. He even had to design the team's employment application form!

When an expansion team joins the NHL the other teams must make some of their players available so the new team can draft one from each team. The teams would be expected to make available players they weren't keen on keeping; the players put on those lists could be expected to be sullen about it. Somehow, McPhee put all the pieces together, helped give the team some pride, and many of the expansion-drafted players of the Knights' inaugural season had their most productive year ever.

Answer: James Neal

The Knights' first game was against the Dallas Stars in Dallas, Texas. The Stars got off to a 1-0 lead in the game but Neal, whom the Knights acquired from the Nashville Predators, tied it at 9:33 in the third quarter, then went on to score the game-winning goal with 2:59 left in the game, gaining himself another bit of hockey history.

As well as getting used to having their first big-time sports team, Las Vegans learned some new words to go with this sport: "blue line", "icing", "crease", "clap bomb", "forecheck" and of course "eh".

Answer: Marc-Andre Fleury

Fleury came to the Knights well-seasoned after being on three Pittsburgh Penguins Stanley Cup-winning teams. Early in the season he suffered a concussion when Detroit Red Wings player Anthony Mantha collided with him; Fleury was sidelined for a month. Four other Knights goalies took their turn, some of them being injured too. Coming back, Fleury took charge and saw the Knights through the season.

Answer: Arizona Coyotes

The Knights won their home opener by a 5 to 2 score on October 10, 2017. They came home from starting the season with a two-game road trip to an unbelievable situation because Las Vegas was still reeling from the shooting deaths of 58 people at a country music concert on October 1. Hundreds more were wounded. Team management had elaborate plans for the Knights' first home game but threw them out and instead, before the game, 26 police officers, fire fighters, emergency medical technicians, doctors and nurses were introduced, representative of the people who worked through the night and into October 2nd to bring order and help the wounded. It was a cathartic moment for the team and the town.

In the last home game of the regular season on March 3, 2018, against the San Jose Sharks, a banner in memory of the 58 people who died on 1 October was raised to the rafters of the T-Mobile Arena. The Knights decided, in remembrance of those 58 people, to retire jersey number 58; no Vegas Golden Knight will ever wear it.

Answer: William Karlsson

Symbolizing the usual assumption that expansion teams wouldn't be much of a cohesive unit, "Golden Misfits" became a rallying cry for the team and the fans. Karlsson, whom the Knights acquired from the Columbus Blue Jackets, was given credit for the name but in a late-season interview said that it was actually James Neal who thought it up.

Answer: No one, everybody stayed cool

The Knights avoided donnybrooks during their first season and what fighting they did engage in resulted in in-game penalties - or the opposing team's player got suspended. The worst infraction for the Golden Knights was Deryk Engelland's fine of $2,688.17 for cross-checking Brandon Saad of the Chicago Blackhawks on February 14, 2018; not your normal Valentine's Day present!

Answer: Clarence S. Campbell Bowl

Often just called the Campbell Bowl, it was awarded to the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2017-18 season. The Western Conference finals are in the last round of playoffs and decides one of the Stanley Cup contenders. The Knights won it in five games against the Winnipeg Jets, the last game being played in Winnipeg. Watching it on TV, I noticed that many of the Jets fans stayed after the game for the trophy presentation and applauded the Knights. Maybe they were hoping the Western Conference champions would represent the conference well in the Stanley Cup. I just like to think that there are a lot of classy people in Winnipeg.

Answer: Washington Capitals

The Knights won the first game, though they were a bit shaky. With less than two minutes remaining in the second game, the Knights were behind 3 to 2; the Golden Knights got the puck into the Washington Capitals' zone and Alex Tuch had a sure shot at the goal. Capitals goalie Braden Holtby held his stick up in a wild attempt to stop the shot. A photograph clearly shows the puck bouncing off the M of the CCM logo on the side of Holtby's stick. A goaltender's stick is 3.5 in/89 mm wide at that part. That may have been the save that took the wind out of the Knights' sails and gave the Capitals the juice to handle whatever the Knights threw at them for the next three games. The Capitals won the Stanley Cup, 4 games to 1, for the first time in their 44-year history, on their second try.

The Knights, who the Las Vegas sports betting companies originally gave a 500 to 1 chance to win the Stanley Cup, came up just three games short of making complete hockey history but in the process coalesced as a team and set many records; first, expansion team records, then any-team records; some of their achievements topping some that went back 90 or 100 years. The little team that probably wouldn't be able to - almost did.