Golden Knights open camp with 'unfinished business' after 2 wins short of the Cup

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Life is seldom dull around the Golden Knights, and that was certainly the case at the end of last season when Vegas fired its championship coach, hired another title-winning coach and then moved on to a third after an unlikely Stanley Cup Final run.

What truly matters to the Golden Knights is not so much the process, but the end.

They came two victories from their second Cup in four years, even leading Carolina 2-1 at one point.

“You don’t forget coming two games short of winning the Stanley Cup,” center Jack Eichel said Thursday on the first day of training camp.

Now with another season seemingly suddenly upon them with Chicago visiting on Sept. 29, the Golden Knights are especially hungry to finish the job. They again are among the favorites, listed at between +850 and 10-1 odds at major sportsbooks.

As Vegas enters its 10th season, the standard has been the Cup since the Golden Knights made the final in its first year in 2018 and lost in five games to Washington.

“I sure think it's unfinished business,” general manager Kelly McCrimmon said. “You're two wins away from a Stanley Cup and weren't able to make that happen. That's the focus going into every year. It's a long journey. You've got to be a playoff team first. You've got to take the steps that go with it, which starts with a good camp, a good start to the regular season and then it's 84 games.”

This franchise has never been afraid to make big changes, beginning with the run-up to the expansion draft in 2017. Vegas made a series of shrewd moves that landed them such cornerstone players as William Karlsson and Shea Theodore who remain key members of the roster.

Management never stopped trying to upgrade the lineup — and those who coached the players. The Golden Knights fired Gerard Gallant in January 2020 and Pete DeBoer in May 2022, and even Bruce Cassidy was far from irreplaceable after taking Vegas to the 2023 Cup title. He was let go with eight games left last season and the Golden Knights in danger of missing the playoffs.

In came John Tortorella, who led Tampa Bay to the 2004 championship and introduced a fiery element to the Golden Knights locker room. That sparked the players on a 7-0-1 season-ending run to go from third place in the Pacific Division to first. Vegas then rolled through the first three rounds of the playoffs, including pulling off a stunning sweep of Presidents' Trophy winner Colorado.

The Golden Knights then came close to winning another Cup, taking a 2-1 lead over the Hurricanes that probably should have been 3-0 if not for blowing a two-goal lead in the third period of Game 2. Carolina closed out the series in six games on Vegas' ice.

“When you come that close, it stinks,” forward Mitch Marner said.

Even though Tortorella got the Golden Knights so close, he was gone shortly afterward. The franchise had its eyes on Ryan Craig, who coached the club's American Hockey League affiliate in neighboring Henderson. Few know the organization better; he has been with the main club or in the system since 2017.

“I don't think Craig is going to have to change a whole lot when it comes to messaging as far as the way we do things and operate," captain Mark Stone said. "We were two games away from another Stanley Cup, so we like (how) the team was built. We like where the team's mindset is.

"He needs to kind of get his message out there, but I'm pretty confident in the ability of the guys in the room to take whatever message we're getting and run with it.”

The Golden Knights will never be satisfied with falling short. They have missed the playoffs just once in team history, one of the greatest expansion franchises ever in North American major sports.

Everyone knows the expectations and understands management will do whatever it can fulfill those.

“I feel like this group always feels like we have something to prove," Eichel said. "To ourselves more than anything."

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FILE - Vegas Golden Knights right wing Mark Stone skates against the Pittsburgh Penguins during the third period of an NHL hockey game, March 12, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Candice Ward, File)

FILE - Vegas Golden Knights right wing Mitch Marner, top, celebrates his goal with center Tomas Hertl during the second period in Game 3 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Final series against the Carolina Hurricanes, June 6, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Candice Ward, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former Syrian military official convicted of torturing prisoners during the rule of former President Bashar Assad has been sentenced to 60 years in a U.S. prison.

A federal judge in Los Angeles sentenced Samir Ousman Alsheikh on Thursday. A jury found him guilty in March of one count of conspiracy to commit torture and three counts of torture while in charge of Syria's infamous Adra Prison from roughly 2005 to 2008.

“The conduct was heinous, unimaginably cruel, and almost unspeakably violent and brutal,” the judge said before announcing the sentence.

Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention facilities, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families.

Prosecutors said Alsheikh, seeking to quash political dissent, sent certain prisoners to a wing of Adra where they were held in small isolation cells and tortured.

At the two-week trial, three victims recounted beatings while suspended from pipes on the ceiling and the use of a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist. One person testified that Alsheikh stomped on the device with his foot, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Defendant knew that what he was doing was wrong,” DOJ prosecutors said in a sentencing memo filed this month. “Nonetheless he ordered and participated in the torture of his victims because he had the power to do so and because he thought he would never be held accountable.”

The memo included statements from several victims, one of whom, Nidal Shikhani, said he can “still hear the screams of others begging for mercy, repeating, ‘Leave me, leave me.’”

The prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera for a minimum sentence of 80 years. Alsheikh's attorneys, Nina Marino and Collin Cate, have called for a five-year sentence, noting that he is 74 years old and has “significant medical and cognitive conditions.”

They also said he was willing to be deported to Syria, where a new government has sought to hold Assad-era security officials accountable.

“Whatever moral weight this case carries in the broader arc of history — however much the world, or the victims, or the public might wish the sentence to ‘send a message’ — that desire cannot be the foundation of a just sentence,” Marino and Cate wrote in their Sept. 3 memo.

Alsheikh came to the U.S. in 2020 and applied for citizenship, but prosecutors say he concealed his involvement in torture. Federal authorities detained him at Los Angeles International Airport in July 2024.

Jurors also convicted him in March of lying to U.S. immigration authorities and fraudulently obtaining a green card and attempting to naturalize as a U.S. citizen.

Assad was ousted in a lightning rebel offensive in December 2024, bringing a 14-year civil war to an end, but the country has continued to suffer from sporadic outbreaks of violence.

In March 2025, armed groups aligned with Assad ambushed the new government’s security forces on Syria’s coast. A government counteroffensive then spiraled into sectarian revenge attacks and the massacre of hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs.

On Thursday, three people were sentenced in the Syrian city of Aleppo in connection with the violence. Two members of the pro-Assad groups were sentenced to death and life in prison, while a member of the security forces who took part in the revenge attacks was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Thanawala reported from Atlanta.

The exterior of the federal courthouse is seen March 27, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer, File)