Graney: Ryan Craig has much to prove as new Golden Knights’ coach

Ryan Craig has been with the Vegas Golden Knights organization since its inaugural season nine years ago, the first six as an assistant coach and the last three as head coach of Henderson in the American Hockey League.

He knows all about the standard, the expectations, the endless pursuit of Stanley Cup championships from the very top of the franchise to every department and person below it.

And on Thursday, he was introduced as the fifth head coach in team history,

Which means Craig has everything to prove.

He has done nothing from the chair he now sits. It’s on him to demonstrate that the organization grooming a coach internally to assume such a significant position was the right call.

It seems everyone who knows him believes it is.

But it’s certainly a different role.

One of which he owns some advantages.

Messaging pros

Craig as a top assistant worked with several of the players who inhabit the Vegas room, worked with them as the franchise won its Stanley Cup in 2023. He knows their habits, their tendencies, what makes them tick.

But it’s a veteran group with strong leadership and which in many ways police itself.

How will the voice of a first-time NHL coach go over in such a setting?

He isn’t, as in Henderson, teaching players how to be pros.

He has a room full of them now.

The messaging changes drastically. How it is accepted comes down to how those veterans view it.

“This is a unique situation in the sense I am a first time (NHL) head coach, but I do know lot of (the players) and have won with the guys in the room,” Craig said. “There is a relationship there. I believe that just because I was an assistant coach, there wasn’t tough conversations had or that there wasn’t accountability. I believe there is a lot of respect in the room between all of us and a shared goal in the sense of trying to win a Stanley Cup.”

Said general manager Kelly McCrimmon: “I really feel that when Ryan was an assistant coach with our team, he was so professional and all business. He wasn’t just one of the guys. He had the respect of being a former player and was professional in how he handled the relationships with the players.”

There is a leadership quality to Craig. He played in nearly 200 NHL games and was an AHL captain for nine seasons. McCrimmon has known the coach since he was 15 and for some time has envisioned this day.

But he wanted Craig to take the correct journey to reaching it, to gain the experience now needed to hold such a position. That meant serving as an assistant on Vegas staffs of Gerard Gallant and Pete DeBoer and Bruce Cassidy.

That meant heading down the highway to Henderson and learning the ins and outs of being a head coach.

The good, the bad, the ugly, all the steps one must take to make this a reality.

“There are ups and downs every year for every coach,” McCrimmon said. “We’ll have some this year, but Ryan’s leadership for me has always been elite.

“He’ll manage those situations. He’ll work with his leadership group in the dressing room and I don’t anticipate it will be any different than what he dealt with the last three years or what he dealt with in six years with our team.”

Just with a lot more at stake as an NHL head coach.

He’s well aware

He replaces a Stanley Cup winning coach (John Tortorella), who replaced a Stanley Cup winning coach (Cassidy). Craig is 44 with still everything to prove given the chair in which he now resides.

But the job is not lost on him. The moment isn’t either. He said a few times Thursday that he’s prepared for this, ready for this.

It’s now on him to show it.

This much is true: He absolutely understands what it all means.

“This team’s been built through standards since Day One, and those standards aren’t going to change,” Craig said. “You talked about winning the Stanley Cup or competing for the Stanley Cup. That’s the standard that is in this organization.

“As for expectations, we’re going to go about our business day in and day out with the goal in mind to continue to build, stack, get better each and every day, so that we have an opportunity when the calendar flips in mid-April to compete for the trophy.”

It’s all that matters around here.

Ryan Craig is well aware.