At the beginning of October, ahead of the 2021-22 NHL season, the Golden Knights were +800 to win the Stanley Cup, the third-highest odds out of any team in the league.
Seven months later, as May approaches with the start of the postseason, Vegas will not be one of the 16 teams competing for a title.
So what happened? How is it that a team regarded as one of the Cup favorites, who also added a star in Jack Eichel in November, could not make the postseason?
The cop-out answer is injuries and there is an argument to be made. Long-term injured reserve (LTIR) became synonymous with the Golden Knights this season. Since the inception of LTIR in 2015, no team has had more players on the list at a single time than Vegas did this season, with seven players placed on LTIR at one point in April.
Their star players dealt with injuries, as Max Pacioretty, Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, Alec Martinez, William Karlsson and Reilly Smith all saw time on LTIR at some point during the season. No doubt they were one of the most injured teams throughout the season.
But every team deals with health issues. It's expected to happen. You are supposed to find ways to overcome it. So for a team with as much talent as Vegas, there is no reason why the Golden Knights could not have found a way to be one of the top eight teams in the Western Conference.
With the team failing to reach the postseason, one user on Twitter brought up a very valid question: Are the 2021-22 Golden Knights the best team to miss the postseason?
There's certainly an argument to be made that they are up there. With that, let's take a look at some other great teams that could not find their way to the postseason.
1969-70 Montreal Canadiens
The Canadiens were a nightmare for teams to deal with during the '50s, '60s and '70s. Entering the 1969-70 season, Montreal was coming off back-to-back Stanley Cup wins, led by greats Jean Beliveau, Henri Richard, Yvan Cournoyer and Serge Savard.
However, like the Golden Knights, injuries played a role in the team's lack of dominance compared with past years. Beliveau and Richard were hurt for stretches of the season and Savard suffered a season-ending leg injury three weeks before the end of the regular season. The Canadiens and Rangers were neck and neck as the playoffs approached and it actually came down to the final regular season game to determine the winner.
A Canadiens loss and Rangers win meant the two would be tied in points and go to a tiebreaker. New York defeated the Red Wings 9-5 while the Canadiens fell 10-2, allowing five empty-net goals. With both sitting at 92 points, the tiebreaker was goals scored during the season. Thanks to the nine-spot the Rangers put up, they won the tiebreaker, earning the final playoff spot in the East division.
To make matters worse, it was the third season since the NHL had expanded from six teams to 12. The increase in clubs did not affect the Canadiens' success the first two years, but it was a factor in the Habs missing the 1970 postseason. While they finished fifth in the East division, Montreal had a better record than every team in the West division.
It was the first time since the beginning of the NHL that Montreal missed the playoffs. It didn't take long for the team to rebound, though, as it won two Cups in the next three seasons.
1992-93 New York Rangers
The Rangers had just come off a disappointing end to the 1992 playoffs. The team won the President's Trophy and earned the top seed in the East but were upset in the division finals by the Penguins, the eventual Stanley Cup champion.
New York was loaded with talent, with Mark Messier, Brian Leetch, Adam Graves, Mike Gartner and Tony Amonte at the helm. Given the regular-season success the year before, the Rangers were expected to be just as dominant.
Well, things did not go as expected. After a midseason coaching change from Roger Neilson to Ron Smith, the Rangers continued to float on the outside of the playoff race. Leetch, who had missed time already with a neck injury, broke his ankle in March after slipping on black ice while stepping out of a cab. He was done for the year, marking the beginning of the end for the Rangers.
The team won just one game in their final 12 contests and ended the season on a seven-game skid. They finished last in the Patrick division, missing the playoffs for the first time since 1988.
Like the Canadiens, they rebounded the next season, as a healthy Leetch helped the team win the Stanley Cup in 1994. The blue liner earned the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP.
MORE: Which team has won the most Stanley Cups?
1995-96 New Jersey Devils
The vibes could not have been higher in New Jersey. The Devils were fresh off sweeping the Red Wings in the 1995 Stanley Cup Finals, bringing the franchise its first Cup win.
Then the Devils learned the definition of "Stanley Cup hangover." All the same top dogs from the year before were back — Martin Brodeur, Scott Stevens, Ken Daneyko, John MacLean, Bill Guerin. The list goes on. Yet, by New Year's, the team was under .500 and out of the playoffs.
General manager Lou Lamoriello tried to wheel and deal his way into finding success. He made eight trades during the course of the season, bringing in Esa Tikkanen, Dave Andreychuk and Phil Housley. But it was all for naught, as the Devils could not gel together and a loss in the regular-season finale knocked them out of the playoffs.
The league expansion played a factor as well, as the Devils had a better record than five of the playoff teams in the Western Conference, but finished ninth in the East. At the time, the Devils were the third team in NHL history to win the Stanley Cup, then miss the postseason the next season.
New Jersey would not miss the playoffs again until 2011, making four trips to the Finals in the process with two Stanley Cup wins to show.
2016-17 Tampa Bay Lightning
In 2015, the Lightning made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals, losing to the Blackhawks. In 2016, the Lightning were one game away from another Finals appearance before falling in Game 7 of the conference finals to the Penguins.
In 2017, the Lightning failed to make the playoffs. Most notably, that was the season Steven Stamkos played in just 17 games as a result of a torn lateral meniscus in his left knee.
Without their captain, Tampa Bay failed to live up to expectations. The team finished one point shy of a playoff spot, ending the season in fifth place in the Atlantic division.
What's surprising is that most of the names on the roster make up the same squads that won the Cup in 2020 and 2021. In addition to Stamkos, Victor Hedman, Ondrej Palat, Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point and Alex Killorn were all on the roster that missed the playoffs.
While it was a disappointing ending for sure in 2017, I think the two back-to-back Cups more than make up for it.
