The Vegas Golden Knights have hired Ryan Craig as the club’s next head coach, the team announced Wednesday.
Craig, 44, joined the organization in 2017 and has been the head coach of the AHL Henderson Silver Knights for the last three seasons. He is now the third-youngest coach in the NHL, trailing Ryan Warsofsky (San Jose, 38) and Dan Muse (Pittsburgh, 43).
The Golden Knights will officially introduce him as the fifth head coach in franchise history Thursday morning.
Originally drafted in the eighth round of the 2002 NHL Draft (No. 255 overall), Craig played parts of eight seasons in the NHL, recording 32 goals and 63 points in 198 games for the Lightning, Penguins and Blue Jackets. He played 11 playoff games with Tampa Bay in 2005-06 and 2006-07, recording 11 shots, a minus-four rating and 22 penalty minutes while averaging 9:44 of ice time.
Craig helped Henderson return to the playoffs this past year after an impressive finish to the regular season that saw Henderson go 39-21-12 for 90 points. The Silver Knights lost to the Colorado Eagles in the second round of the Calder Cup Playoffs.
Craig served as an assistant coach with the Golden Knights for six seasons prior to joining Henderson, including when Vegas lifted its first Stanley Cup in 2023.
The news about Craig’s promotion comes one day after the Golden Knights announced that John Tortorella would not remain with the club.
Coaching carousel
Tortorella replaced Bruce Cassidy on March 30 with eight games remaining in the regular season.
Under Tortorella, the Golden Knights finished the regular season with a 7-0-1 record and went 14-8 in the postseason as the team made its third Stanley Cup Final appearance in nine years. Vegas was eliminated by Carolina in six games.
“I want to thank John Tortorella for his time in the organization,” general manager Kelly McCrimmon said Wednesday. “What an impact he had. The energy, the enthusiasm. He saved our season; he turned our team around. Our players loved playing for him, and it was a tremendous 30 games that he coached for our organization. … The impact he had on the players, the confidence he instilled, the empowerment he gave our assistant coaches, and the contributions that they were able to make during his time here was all part and parcel of why the team had the success that it did have.”
The move to dismiss Cassidy — who coached the Golden Knights to the team’s first Stanley Cup championship in 2023 — sent shockwaves through the NHL at the time, though the results are difficult to dispute.
“We were in a tough spot coming into the final stages of the season,” McCrimmon said. “Coming out of the Olympics, I really looked at that as an opportunity where we were gonna take a pop, and we weren’t able to do that. We made the change that we made. We were able to finish the regular season strong, get some momentum, get some confidence back, and I thought really played great hockey in the playoffs.
“We’re extremely disappointed that we didn’t finish the series as champions. I tip my hat to the Carolina Hurricanes organization, but I really felt strongly that our team was the best team.”
When asked what went wrong in the Stanley Cup Final, McCrimmon pointed to a few particular moments in the series that he believed were turning points.
Though he admitted that Carolina was hungry and competitive throughout, he discussed Mitch Marner hitting the crossbar when Vegas led 2-0 in Game 2 and the goaltender interference call that negated Ivan Barbashev’s go-ahead goal late in the third period of that game. He also mentioned Jack Eichel hitting the crossbar when the score was 2-2 in Game 4.
“There’s always a number of random events that go on in the course of a series, and we had some of those that didn’t go our way,” he said.
McCrimmon did not mention Tortorella’s management of the series, including keeping a struggling Carter Hart in the crease as well as blowing several multi-goal leads, one of which involved yielding three goals in 39 seconds in Game 3. Vegas went on to win that game in double overtime, but the Golden Knights had trouble maintaining leads, which was a common theme for both teams throughout the Final. Tortorella issued a questionable challenge in Game 2, failed to use timeouts during critical momentum shifts and was significantly outcoached by Carolina’s Rod Brind’Amour.
But while Tortorella is moving on, it’s not because he didn’t want to stay. In fact, McCrimmon confirmed that Tortorella expressed interest in remaining with the team, but Vegas elected to promote Craig instead.
“John wanted to coach our team again this year,” the Vegas general manager said. “He wants to coach and continue to coach. We really wanted to give this opportunity to Ryan Craig, who’s been in our organization for nine years.”
McCrimmon went on to explain why Craig wasn’t promoted initially.
“The nature of the situation, we had eight games left in the season. We were potentially on our way to missing the playoffs depending on how those eight games went. Torts was very experienced, very comfortable in his own skin, very much gonna come in and hit the round running.”
McCrimmon said he didn’t think “it would have been fair to Ryan Craig to start his career as head coach that way.” He also said the organization believed it was important for Craig to gain the experience of coaching in the AHL playoffs.
As for why Vegas hired Tortorella, specifically, McCrimmon said Tortorella fit the bill of what Vegas needed in the moment.
“We needed a jolt,” he said. “John was the guy that we thought was the best candidate to do that, and that’s exactly what he did, exactly what he was.”
McCrimmon did not specifically answer questions regarding whether Tortorella would have stayed on had the Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup, though he did explain that the original plan was to reassess things at the end of the season.
He said that the playoff run “didn’t really impact anything in any real significant way. I met with John Monday morning and shared with him my thoughts. … I know he was disappointed because he did want to coach our team next year, but I know he has a lot of regard for Ryan [whom he coached earlier in his career] and a lot of respect for the organization. He really enjoyed his time here.”
At the end of the day, the Golden Knights are moving on from Cassidy, Tortorella and the 2026 postseason, and Craig will be at the helm.
“I had a pretty strong feeling of where our organization needs to go next,” McCrimmon said. “Ryan’s been in our organization for nine years — six years with our team, three years as the head coach in Henderson — and he’s ready to be an NHL head coach. … That carried the day.”
Coaching controversies
That being said, Tortorella’s three-month tenure didn’t come and go without drama.
Notably, Tortorella was fined $100,000 when he and the Golden Knights violated the NHL’s media policy after eliminating Anaheim in Game 6 of the second round. This also led to the forfeiture of the Golden Knights’ 2026 second-round draft pick. Vegas appealed the ruling, but the NHL upheld the decision.
When asked about more recent speculation regarding Vegas’ ability to reacquire that draft pick, McCrimmon’s response was curt.
“That’s business between the National Hockey League and ourselves,” he said. “We’re not gonna be able to comment on that, so that’s how I would answer that.”
In addition, Vegas also has been on the hot seat for its handling of Cassidy’s rights. Specifically, the Golden Knights have denied Cassidy the chance to interview with other teams. Though it is within Vegas’ rights to do so, it’s a position that has been widely criticized.
However, McCrimmon revealed that the Golden Knights did give Cassidy permission to speak with one team midway through the playoff run.
“We had a situation where we did grant Bruce permission to speak with another team,” he said. “That didn’t come to fruition.”
Moving forward, McCrimmon said the team will “deal with it on a case-by-case basis.”
Offseason preparation
For now, McCrimmon and the organization will be hard at work looking ahead to the 2026-27 season.
McCrimmon said on multiple occasions that he believes in this team and is fond of the team’s makeup, saying the roster “served us really well in the playoffs. I thought we could play any way that you want to play. We’re really proud of the efforts that our guys gave.”
He said the team has “a great nucleus” as well as great leadership and character.
Vegas will evaluate the roster over the next few weeks with the draft (June 26-27) and free agency (July 1) on the horizon. “We’ll continue doing what we always do,” he said.
In other words, the Golden Knights will continue to pursue upgrading the team in any way possible.
“It’s the nature of the business that there’s always some change, and that’s what we’re really digging into now,” he said.
McCrimmon, who spoke to the media for roughly half an hour on Wednesday, gave an overview of injuries various players were battling in the playoffs.
William Karlsson will have surgery on a broken wrist, an injury he sustained in Game 5. Noah Hanifin had an upper-body injury that would have kept him out of the lineup for 6-8 weeks had it been the regular season. Also, in addition to the injuries suffered from taking a slapshot to the face, Brayden McNabb had two other injuries, “which is just more testament to the warrior that he is for our organization,” McCrimmon said. Mark Stone played through a torn adductor.
McCrimmon said injuries were a concern throughout the year, particularly because of the compressed schedule due to the Olympics, which featured eight Golden Knights participants.
“The season was a grind, and I think a lot of teams really felt the difference with the schedule because of the Olympics,” he said. “It was so compressed; there was just really no time to catch your breath. Injuries were a big part of our regular season. I thought they really impacted us, particularly in goal.
“[Adin Hill] missed 39 games, [Hart] missed 34 games, and they both missed 22 of the same games, so that’s a real tough position to have those type of injuries. But everywhere throughout the lineup we dealt with the injuries.”
With regards to the goalies, McCrimmon said he doesn’t like Vegas’ goaltending but likes the Golden Knights’ goalies.
“For me, injuries were such a big part of it for both guys. It’s tough for any skater to miss a significant length of time, to come back and be right up to speed as quickly as you can be. When you look at the margins of being an NHL goalie, missing time, coming back, it’s just that much harder. … Carter was tremendous and a big part of why our team advanced the way that we did.
“Adin is a really good goaltender that had a disappointing year. He would tell you that, I would tell you that, but I don’t think it’s because he’s not a good goaltender. He only played two games for Torts, and I thought he played really well. … When you’ve been in the same dressing room and in the same organization as a goaltender that won you a Stanley Cup, that still carries some weight in my eyes.”
McCrimmon said he felt the acquisitions made throughout the season helped Vegas on its run, starting with last summer’s blockbuster acquisition of Marner. The Golden Knights also acquired Jeremy Lauzon and Colton Sissons from Nashville as well as Hart, Rasmus Andersson, Cole Smith and Nic Dowd.
Andersson is a pending unrestricted free agent, though his agent, the late great Claude Lemieux, passed away in May. McCrimmon said that Vegas will communicate with Lemieux’s colleagues and that the organization will evaluate Andersson’s contract situation, as they will with the other pending free agents.
The list of UFA’s includes forwards Reilly Smith, Cole Smith, Sissons and Brandon Saad as well as defensemen Ben Hutton, Lauzon, Andersson and Dylan Coghlan. Pavel Dorofeyev and Akira Schmid are pending restricted free agents.
“The big thing will be to make our decisions on our UFA’s, work towards retaining the players that we want to retain,” McCrimmon said. “Dorofeyev’s a restricted free agent, which means we retain his rights, but clearly he’s a player that’s really blossomed. So getting clarity on all of those players, in turn, then dictates what possibilities or opportunities you may or may not have as you move forward.”
McCrimmon said he couldn’t speculate on whether other teams will try to extend an offer sheet to Dorofeyev, though it’s a real concern considering the rising cap.
But while McCrimmon was very complimentary of the team, he was clear that there will be changes.
“It’s gonna look different,” he said. “It just does every year. That’s our business. I think over time I’ve always had a real good understanding of what the team needs to look like to have a chance to win. It’s not gonna be the exact same 25 guys, but we’ll work to get there again.”
McCrimmon said following the Stanley Cup run was exciting, but now the work begins.
“You realize once it’s over, you are jumping on a moving train. You gotta get to work in a hurry, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Vegas villains
McCrimmon also responded to a recent poll that indicated that NHL fans view Vegas as the most hated franchise.
“I think people have a hard time explaining why we win as much as we do,” he said. “We’ve been to the Stanley Cup Final three times in nine years. And it’s interesting; we went in 2018, 2023 and 2026, and what that tells you, that’s three completely different teams. It’s not like we went three times in four years with 90 percent of our nucleus remaining the same over the period of time.”
He went through many of the common excuses, including that the expansion rules were unfairly favorable, though he cited the Kraken having the same rules yet not matching Vegas’ success. He also quipped about Vegas forcing Stone to have back surgery “for fun,” referencing those who accused Vegas of putting Stone on LTIR solely for the purposes of circumventing the salary cap.
But McCrimmon’s main explanation for the fans was simple.
“It’s jealousy, and people are uncomfortable admitting that we’ve done a hell of a job,” he said. “That’s what I honestly think.”
Many of the players were asked the same in Tuesday’s media availability, and Eichel talked about how no players in the league would have Vegas on their no-trade list. McCrimmon elaborated on that point.
“When you hear that a person from another organization is interested in coming to Vegas, the first reason they’re interested in coming to Vegas is because we win. … They like being on teams that try to win. … I’m not gonna apologize for it,” he said.
When asked if he ever reflects on the level of success Vegas has achieved, McCrimmon said “reminiscing is best for high school reunions. … But yeah, you’re darn right we’re proud of what the organization has done.”