Vegas Golden Knights Win the Stanley Cup in Just Their Sixth Season. The Western Conference  champion Vegas Golden Knights defeated the Eastern Conference champion Florida Panthers four games to one in the best-of-seven series to one to earn their first championship in their sixth season. The Knights, the top seed in the Western Conference, used a high-speed, sharp-elbowed attack to overwhelm the Panthers, the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference, in five games. The Knights were making their second appearance in the finals, the same as the Panthers.

But while the Panthers came within one round of a championship for the first time since 1996, the Knights made the second-fastest trip to a Stanley Cup victory by any team in the expansion era that began in 1967, trailing only the Edmonton Oilers, who won the Cup in their fifth season in the league. (The Oilers played seven seasons in the World Hockey Association before joining the NHL). This was the first Finals series since 2018 in which neither team had previously won the Stanley Cup.

Quebec native Jonathan Marchessault was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP of the playoffs. Vegas became the second fastest team to win the Stanley Cup as an expansion franchise, following the Edmonton Oilers in 1984. The win gave the state of Nevada and the Las Vegas metropolitan area its first ever major (North American “Big Four”) professional sports championship and the first ever championship for a North American Big Four professional sports team that was founded in the 21st Century.