Graney: McPhee, McCrimmon made right moves to deliver Stanley Cup

Turns out, George McPhee and Kelly McCrimmon sure were accurate in building the Golden Knights into a Stanley Cup champion.

They held aloft the Cup on Tuesday night, the team they had constructed having clinched its championship with a 9-3 victory against the Florida Panthers at T-Mobile Arena.

And they basked in it, McPhee the team’s president of hockey operations and McCrimmon as its general manager.

And they should have.

They earned such satisfaction.

Wanting to win

You could never accuse either of not wanting to win at the highest of levels, of not making the moves — however unpopular with a fan base at the time — they believed would create such a roster as the current one.

Sports fans are pretty consistent and that’s not a bad thing. They become attached to specific players over time. Can’t imagine cheering for a team without them. They become emotionally invested. Beyond passionate.

So when names like Nate Schmidt and Marc-Andre Fleury and others are dealt away, fans often react with disbelief and bitterness. It’s understandable.

But so must this be: Every decision made by the McPhee-McCrimmon tandem the last six years was meant to deliver the Knights to this moment. That it concluded with a championship is a testament to their collaborative efforts.

“It’s been a process that has been calculated,” McCrimmon said. “We think we’ve built our best team. We try to make good decisions, and it’s not about one good decision. You have to make a series of good decisions to build a solid organization, to build something like what you see here (with the Cup), and I really feel that we did that.”

Six of the original Misfits from a magical expansion season remain while key names like Mark Stone and Alex Pietrangelo and Chandler Stephenson and Jack Eichel and Alec Martinez and Nic Roy and Ivan Barbashev and Adin Hill and others arrived over time.

Seems like forever ago, when McPhee hired McCrimmon in 2016 as an assistant general manager shortly after coming aboard with the Knights. How they successfully executed an expansion draft. How McCrimmon was then elevated to general manager in 2019. How what you see now was built over time and not overnight.

How those near misses in losing in a Stanley Cup final that first season and then again in the Western Conference final and then again in the NHL semifinals only pushed the two even harder to scale a final hurdle. And it took more than just talented players.

“That first year, I think everybody liked this team,” McPhee said. “I don’t know if they liked hockey. I don’t know if they knew much about hockey. But they liked this team, what these guys stood for. From Day One, this group of players, just really high-character group and that makes a difference.

“They’ve been great on the ice, but they’ve been even better off the ice with what they’ve done in this community, the charities they’ve worked for, the money they’ve raised, the time that they’ve given to various causes. I know why we won, because it’s just a really high-character group. Who’s inside that jersey matters and we have people that matter.”

Know this: Popularity doesn’t win you championships. Having a plan and sticking to it often does. That’s what McPhee and McCrimmon have done, no matter how some of their moves were received by those on the outside.

And for them, it has all been worth it. You saw that Tuesday.

‘A little surreal’

“A little overwhelming when it first hits you,” McCrimmon said on the T-Mobile Arena ice minutes after the Golden Knights secured their title. “A little surreal. Everybody dreams about it, but until it happens, you really don’t know how it’s going to hit you. It’s just awesome.”

Validates those decisions that came before.

Validates all that which built such a winning program.

Nobody wanted to win more than McPhee and McCrimmon.

They held aloft the Cup and basked in it.

And they should have.

Ed Graney is a Sigma Delta Chi Award winner for sports column writing and be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com. He can be heard on “The Press Box,” ESPN Radio 100.9 FM and 1100 AM, from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on Twitter.