By Alan Snel
LVSportBiz.com
Meet George McPhee and Kelly McCrimmon — top of the Vegas Golden Knights hockey operations food chain and practically a married couple.
“We finish each other’s sentences like a married couple,” said McPhee, who will continue as VGK president of hockey operations and promoted McCrimmon from Knights assistant general manager to general manager effective Sept. 1. “It’s the best working relationship I had in this business.”
The duo joined Golden Knights majority owner Bill Foley for a media session at the VGK training center in Summerlin to officially announce that McCrimmon is the two-year-old team’s general manager.
McPhee, a veteran general manager who served as the Washington Capitals GM from 1997-2014, responded to an LVSportsBiz.com question during the media session, “The motivation was inspired by a possibility that Kelly might be leaving.” McPhee told the media that he began three to four weeks ago thinking about promoting McCrimmon from Golden Knights assistant GM to general manager.
“It felt right. It’s easy to do when it’s right,” McPhee said. “I’ve done it for 20 years. It wasn’t a difficult decision. It was the right thing to do.”
McCrimmon will represent the Knights at the NHL’s general manager meetings and will be the point of contact for NHL general managers. LVSportsBiz.com asked McPhee if McCrimmon’s contract with the Golden Knights was extended — and if so, for how long. But McPhee said he doesn’t discuss contracts.
At the press conference, McCrimmon got emotional when discussing his brother Brad, a former Boston Bruins player who died in western Russia at age 52 in 2011. A plane carrying a KHL hockey team including Brad McCrimmon crashed shortly after takeoff. Brad McCrimmon was in his first year as head coach of the Lokomotiv team — and Kelly McCrimmon said Thursday at the news conference that he thinks of Brad every day.
“An occasion like this kinda grabs you,” McCrimmon said.
McPhee said McCrimmon is a salt-of-the-earth guy he met in 2016 before hiring him three years ago.
“He’s owned a team. He coached a team. He managed a team. He scouted,” McPhee said of McCrimmon. “You’re not going to out-work him. He’s as straight as they come. He’s well liked. He’s the kind of guy you want to have a beer with.”
McCrimmon, a Plenty, Saskatchewan, native, served as owner, governor, general manager and head coach of the Western Hockey League’s Brandon Wheat Kings, an organization he has been with since 1988-89. McCrimmon served as head coach from 2004-11, and 2013-16. He has helped the Wheat Kings to five Memorial Cup appearances, once as a player (1979), three times as GM (1995, 1996, 2016) and twice as head coach and general manager (2010, 2016).
Foley, the majority owner and CEO, put it this way about McCrimmon’s promotion to Golden Knights GM: “It’s a ratification of what we did three years ago.”
Foley also pointed out that reporters might enjoy McCrimmon at press conferences. “He might answer some questions,” Foley cracked, eliciting laughs from the media in the press conference room.
McCrimmon was named assistant general manager of the Golden Knights on Aug. 2, 2016 and has played a key role in the construction of the Vegas Golden Knights roster and organization. He was instrumental in the team’s scouting, preparation and player evaluation leading up to and during the 2017 Expansion Draft as well as the team’s inaugural Entry Draft in June of 2017. Since that time, he has assisted McPhee in overseeing all day-to-day hockey operations of the club.
The Golden Knights shocked the sports world in Year 1 by reaching the NHL Stanley Cup Final a year ago and recently lost to the San Jose Sharks in seven games in Round 1 in Year 2 in 2018-19.
If the Knights had won Game 7 against the Sharks, the team would be playing the Colorado Avalanche in Game 4 Round 2 tonight in Denver.
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