It is very hard to win the Stanley Cup in back-to-back NHL seasons
Winning the Stanley Cup is incredibly hard. It is even harder to win it the year after winning it. There is a reason that only a few champions have ever gone back-to-back.
Vegas won't be that team. The fatigue that they faced this season almost cost them a playoff spot let alone making another Cup run.
They got out of the gates as one of the hottest teams in the NHL. From December until the end of the season, however, they were incredibly average.
When you're the defending champion, everyone is playing you as hard as they can every single game. It wears on guys. A lot of the players who won the Cup last year battled something this year.
You can expect these Golden Knights to come into 2024-25 healthy and ready to hit that grind again. They have a lot of time off now to recharge the batteries. They have proven that they deserve the respect as an organization that will learn from this.