Brayden McNabb Reflects On Golden Knights Inaugural Season

Walking off the stage at our Stick Salute to Vegas this week, encouraged by the crowd, made me want to reflect on the crazy past year and just how far we've all come together.
Just about a year ago, the day before the Expansion Draft, my phone rang, at 5 p.m. exact, while I was playing golf back home in Saskatchewan. It was Rob Blake, the general manager of the Los Angeles Kings. He wanted to tell me the Golden Knights would be picking me up in the draft and that George McPhee would be calling me. I was immediately filled with a mix of emotions, moving into a new exciting, but unknown path.
George called me shortly after and asked if I wanted to come down here to be at the draft. I said yes.

I was up at 3 a.m. the next morning and making my way to Vegas. It's kind of tough to get anywhere from Saskatoon, but I was able to get here in time after a long day of travel.
The quick turnaround didn't give me much time to think. I didn't really know what was going on. I loved my teammates in L.A., and I knew it was going to be hard to leave them. Then here, with so many defenseman being picked up, it was unknown if I would even end up on the team at the start of the season. It was all a lot of uncertainty.
And it's been an incredible ride.
I always thought this city could be a great hockey town. L.A. played some games here before the Golden Knights existed, so I got to experience that a couple times and it was awesome. The crowd was great. Probably a lot of L.A. fans, but you could tell it was an entertainment city. Maybe that's all it was meant to be, but once the season went on, you could really start to tell it's a community team and the fans were unbelievable all year.
That night, at the expansion draft, it was the NHL Awards, but it felt like it was all about the expansion. So much excitement and you could tell there was a buzz around town. You could tell the city was excited to have a hockey team.
As the team was revealed, it was cool to see who my new teammates would be. It was a new opportunity for all of us, and it's not often you get so many guys in the same situation. We all knew we had to advantage of the opportunity when it was given to us.
I didn't know any of those guys before that day, but they're all great guys. Everything was so fresh and new, and you're going through a whole life change leaving your old team and old set up and coming to this new, bright crazy place. But we were all doing it together.
The day after the expansion draft was when I first really got to experience the city for more than just The Strip. I was one of four players that came down for the event along with Jason Garrison, Marc-Andre Fleury and Deryk Engelland, just the four of us. It happened really fast and so much of it is a blur. I only knew Garrison through having the same agent, but he was great. Engo, you could tell immediately loves this city. Flower is a guy everyone knows and respects, it's crazy how good of a person he is and everyone can see that from the first day they meet him.
That day helped show the city from angles I'd never seen before. We flew over the city in a helicopter. I'd only seen The Strip before, so to go out and see what it really was and where I might make a home was awesome. It really showed how beautiful this city is and how much there is outside of what a lot of tourists knows.
Going into the season, people kept telling me, telling us, we weren't going to be competitive. Telling me that I would be traded at the deadline, because I was in the last year of my contract. That's kind of what I expected. But then we saw how well we gelled. And October 1 happened. To see the way this community responded to such a horrible tragedy only further bonded us all together and within this city.
Then we won a few games. And the year went on and we kept winning.
And we realized we're a good team and we'd stick together - I got a contract extension and I couldn't ask for anything else.
I really love this city. It's a great place to live, a great place to play and I'm thrilled to continue my career here. You're treated well from the top down and I think we really built a good culture, a winning culture. It's what we expect from one another, not just management.
We have a great start as a franchise and with that start we expect winning every year and I hope the fans are ready to keep winning with us.