Vegas Golden Knights officially announce new head coach and it stretches over two decades

Kelly McCrimmon announced Wednesday that Ryan Craig will become the fifth head coach in Vegas Golden Knights history.

Craig, 44, spent the past three seasons running the Henderson Silver Knights in the AHL, where his win totals climbed each year - 28, 29, then 39 - before guiding Henderson to the second round of the Calder Cup Playoffs this spring.

The surface story is a clean internal promotion from the AHL. The deeper one is far more personal.

Craig suited up for the Brandon Wheat Kings in the Western Hockey League from 1998 to 2003, a stretch during which McCrimmon served as the franchise's owner and general manager.

This isn't a coaching hire built on a résumé - it's built on trust that was assembled long before the Golden Knights ever existed.

Craig joined the Golden Knights organization in 2017 as an assistant coach and spent six seasons on the bench before transitioning to the Henderson role in 2023.

He lifted the Stanley Cup with Vegas in 2023 as an assistant - a title that added crucial credibility to everything he built in the AHL.

The players he developed in Henderson - including Braeden Bowman and Dylan Coghlan - both appeared in the 2026 Stanley Cup Final against Carolina.

Craig didn't merely coach in the pipeline - he built it from the ground up.

John Tortorella was brought in with eight games left in the 2025-26 regular season after Bruce Cassidy was let go.

Tortorella guided Vegas to the Stanley Cup Final, where the Golden Knights lost to the Carolina Hurricanes in six games.

McCrimmon moving on from Tortorella the day after the Final confirms what insiders had been reporting for weeks - Craig was always the intended destination.

Tortorella was a bridge, not a long-term rebuild.

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