{"id":492047,"date":"2026-06-17T13:45:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T17:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=492047"},"modified":"2026-06-17T14:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T18:53:12","slug":"vegas-hires-ryan-craig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2026\/06\/17\/vegas-hires-ryan-craig\/","title":{"rendered":"Vegas Golden Knights Promote Ryan Craig to Become 5th Head Coach in Franchise History"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Talk about not wasting any time at all. Just a day after it was revealed that <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2026\/06\/16\/vegas-john-tortorella\/\" target=\"_self\">John Tortorella would not be returning<\/a> as head coach, the Vegas Golden Knights have hired <a  target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/c\/craigry01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-17_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ryan Craig<\/a> as their new head coach. A busy day for the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2026\/06\/17\/jim-hiller-contract-leafs\/\" target=\"_self\">coaching world<\/a>, indeed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"max-width: 1200px\"><smartframe-embed class=\"smartframe_wp_element\" customer-id=\"3ec16c2e89be0acadd2b088db7a33eb9\" image-id=\"imbrgILHSEIY\" style=\"width: 100%; display: inline-flex; max-width: 2878px; aspect-ratio: 2878\/1737;\" ><\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n<p>Vegas Golden Knights, Team logo<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">COACH CRAIG \u2694\ufe0f<\/p>\n<p>Vegas Golden Knights General Manager Kelly McCrimmon has announced Ryan Craig\u00a0will be the fifth Head Coach in franchise history.<\/p>\n<p>Press release \u27a1\ufe0f <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/VQ9qkUkKYC\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/VQ9qkUkKYC<\/a> <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/sOa25R529Y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/sOa25R529Y<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Vegas Golden Knights (@GoldenKnights) <a  href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/GoldenKnights\/status\/2067292326935048383?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 17, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Golden Knights Hire Ryan Craig as Fifth Head Coach in Franchise History<\/h2>\n<p>Ryan Craig has been involved in the organization since its inception, serving as the assistant coach of the Golden Knights from 2017 to 2023, then becoming the head coach of the Henderson Silver Knights, the AHL affiliate, from 2024 to 2026. Under Craig, Henderson saw a steady improvement in their season records, with a strong last season with 39 victories and 90 points. He also led the Silver Knights to the second round of the Calder Cup Playoffs before their defeat against the Colorado Eagles.<\/p>\n<p>General manager Kelly McCrimmon and Craig have some previous ties, as <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/goldenknights\/news\/lawless-vegas-born-ryan-craig-takes-the-vgk-helm\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">McCrimmon was interested in Craig<\/a> as a coach even from his days as owner of the WHL&#8217;s Brandon Wheat Kings. Even when Craig was still a player, McCrimmon already had his eye on him as the next coach of Brandon, once Craig retired from playing. However, after McCrimmon was brought on as part of the Golden Knights&#8217; management, his vision shifted with Craig being an assistant coach with the team.<\/p>\n<h3>McCrimmon Comments on the Matter<\/h3>\n<p>In a press conference on Wednesday, McCrimmon addressed a variety of issues, including <a  href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/garylawless\/status\/2067295683040952411?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the fate of Bruce Cassidy<\/a>, Tortorella&#8217;s departure, and Ryan Craig being brought on as coach. According to McCrimmon, Tortorella did want to coach the team again, but he wanted to give Craig the opportunity. As for the reason why Craig was not hired when Cassidy was fired, it was because McCrimmon said it would not be fair to put Craig in that position to start his NHL coaching career.<\/p>\n<p>Mandatory Credit: Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">McCrimmon says it wouldn&#39;t have been fair to Ryan Craig to make him start his NHL coaching career in the situation that arose when they fired Bruce Cassidy. That&#39;s why they went with Tortorella over Craig in late March.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; SinBin.vegas (@SinBinVegas) <a  href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SinBinVegas\/status\/2067296686763077668?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 17, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Talk about not wasting any time at all. Just a day after it was revealed that John Tortorella would not be returning as head coach, the Vegas Golden Knights have hired Ryan Craig as their new head coach. A busy day for the coaching world, indeed. Vegas Golden Knights, Team logo COACH CRAIG \u2694\ufe0f Vegas [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5733,"featured_media":492056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[807,4547,34,4548],"tags":[8311,6182],"class_list":["post-492047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vegas-golden-knights","category-hockey","category-news","category-nhl","tag-ryan-craig","tag-vegas-golden-knights-news"],"modified_by":"Levi Pike, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5733"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492047"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492057,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492047\/revisions\/492057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}