Golden Knights become quickest franchise to reach 300 wins with victory in Toronto
The Vegas Golden Knights set a new National Hockey League all-time record with their 6-2 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday night.
The Golden Knights, who entered the league in 2017, eclipsed the Edmonton Oilers as the team that required the fewest games played to rack up 300 wins in the NHL.
It took just 514 games over parts of seven regular seasons for the Golden Knights to join the 300-win club. For comparison, the Oilers needed 542 games to reach the same threshold back in the 1980s.
That's 300 wins for the @GoldenKnights!
The club scored six goals against the Maple Leafs to reach the milestone. #NHLStats: https://t.co/HRiCZxGnzw pic.twitter.com/0XPujfmtgN
One other thing the Golden Knights and the ’80s Oilers have in common: Stanley Cups. Edmonton won the NHL’s top prize in 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1990; Vegas reached the Final in 2018 and won its first championship just last year.
It takes a lot of wins in the regular season to reach the playoffs, let alone to be a top-tier Stanley Cup contender, and the Golden Knights have been one of the NHL’s most dangerous teams ever since their inaugural season.
Save for the 2021–22 season, when they narrowly missed the playoffs, the Golden Knights have been a perennial top team and have only lost in the first round once. That was in 2019, when they lost a dramatic Western Conference quarterfinal series against the San Jose Sharks in seven games.
The Golden Knights won exactly 51 games in the 2017–18 season and repeated that feat in 2022–23. They reached the Stanley Cup Final after both of those seasons, losing in five games to the Washington Capitals in 2018 and beating the Florida Panthers in five last year.
Through 59 games this season, the Golden Knights currently rank second in the Pacific Division with a 33-19-7 record and 73 points. They’re nine points back of the Vancouver Canucks for the top spot in the Western Conference.