‘Dream come true’: Lowes helped build Golden Knights into Stanley Cup champs

By Rob Mahon

The seeds of the Stanley Cup win for the Vegas Golden Knights were first planted before the team ever took a step on the ice.

In 2016-17, Prince Albert product Bob Lowes was among the first ones doing the planting.

Lowes was named the Golden Knights’ assistant director of player personnel that year, and still holds the position today. On June 13, he watched as his efforts and those of the rest of his staff paid off in the most dramatic possible fashion when the Golden Knights hoisted the Stanley Cup.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Lowes, a former player and coach with the WHL’s Regina Pats. “When you start with an expansion team, you really don’t start and think of the Stanley Cup right away. You understand it’s a long haul usually and there are quite few years ahead of you before you hopefully can be competitive because the NHL is such a tough league. But it seemed to come together for us quite well.”

Lowes had reason to think they would be playing a long game in Vegas. Previous expansion franchises had often had historically bad starts to their existence. Unlike most expansion teams, however, the Golden Knights roared out of the gate in the 2017-18 season en route to a Stanley Cup final appearance. That was when Lowes’s job, which focuses more on the amateur scouting side, began to change.

“The plan going forward was to gain more draft picks,” he said. “We had 12 picks that first year. If you look at some of the teams now trying to rebuild, they’ve got 12 or 13 picks. What happened to us, we got to the trade deadline and there were some guys we were going to trade for picks that were on the last years of their contracts, but we were one of the top teams in the league, so we ended up giving up picks to get players to help us try to win.”

Not having as many picks does make an amateur scout’s job more difficult, but Lowes isn’t complaining. While his Golden Knights were in the midst of thumping the Florida Panthers in Game 5 of this year’s final, he knew they would soon be lifting the Cup for the first time.

“It’s kind of surreal,” Lowes said. “You’re sitting there (and) I think it was the second period when we just started playing so well. I was sitting beside Shelley, my wife. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into it with travel and everything, the sacrifices your family makes over the years. It’s a nice moment. It’s very fulfilling. I think we all dream of winning a Stanley Cup.”

Vegas is a city perfect for throwing a massive party, and that’s just what the team did, including the traditional Stanley Cup parade. Lowes got to take part in some of the festivities.

“After the game, I was able to get down to the ice, so I was able to lift the Stanley Cup,” Lowes said. “There were some really good parties, exclusive parties they had for the team and families. Then we were on one of the buses for the parade, all the amateur scouts as well as other staff. That was an experience in and of itself. It’s something I’ll never forget, that’s for sure.”

From 1979 to 1982, Lowes was a member of the Prince Albert Raiders, serving as captain in his final season. He said the city still holds a special place in his heart and often gets up to lakes north of the city during the summer.

Lowes added he doesn’t yet know whether he’ll get a day with the Stanley Cup, but he’s focusing on other things at the moment as the NHL draft in Nashville is now just over a week away. The Golden Knights have the 32nd overall pick, the final pick of the first round.