VGK Camp Is Eight Days Shorter This Year, and the Season Is Longer Than Ever

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Vegas Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon says this year's training camp is eight days shorter than a normal camp, and the team is heading into an 84-game regular season on the other side of it. That is less time to teach and more games to play, and McCrimmon says it brings a new kind of urgency to every practice at City National Arena in Summerlin.

If you live here, this is not just a hockey scheduling note. Season 10 of Golden Knights hockey starts with a compressed runway, a longer grind, and a roster that will likely shuffle between Las Vegas and Henderson more often than usual. That means more nights of hockey in the valley, more movement between the two clubs, and more reasons for families across Clark County to pay attention to what happens on the ice this fall.

What Happened

McCrimmon spoke about the 2026 camp and laid out the math plainly. The camp is shortened by eight days compared to what the staff would normally get. At the same time, the NHL regular season has expanded to 84 games. Fewer days of preparation, more games to prepare for. That is the squeeze the coaching staff is working inside of right now.

There are 66 players at camp. Every one of them will participate except two. Ben Hemmerling was injured at the San Jose rookie tournament and is out. Lukas Cormier had offseason surgery and will practice in a non-contact jersey while he works his way back. Everyone else is on the ice and competing for a spot.

The preseason plan is where the shortened camp shows up most clearly. There are four preseason games, and veterans can play in only two of them. The staff is using younger lineups early, in games one and two, and then featuring the projected opening-night group in games three and four. That is a deliberate split. The young players get a real look in front of a real crowd, and the veterans get a shorter, more targeted ramp-up before the games start counting.

McCrimmon's framing was about urgency. With a normal camp, a coaching staff can install systems in layers, repeat them, back off, and come back to them. With eight fewer days, the layering gets compressed. Players who need reps to learn a system have to pick it up faster. Players who are trying to make the team have fewer chances to show the staff what they can do. Every practice carries more weight than it would in a normal September.

It is also worth saying what the 66-player number actually means. A camp roster that size is not a tryout crowd. It is the full organizational picture in one building: NHL regulars, players on the bubble, prospects signed and developing, and young guys getting their first taste of a pro camp. Sorting 66 players into an opening-night roster and an American Hockey League assignment list is a lot of decisions to make in a short window.

The two-game cap on veterans is the detail that tells you the most about how the staff is thinking. In a normal camp, an established player might get three preseason games to find his legs and shake off the summer. Here, he gets two, and both of them come late, against lineups that are closer to real NHL rosters. The message is that the veterans are trusted to be ready and the ice time is better spent elsewhere.

That elsewhere is the young group. Two full preseason games with younger lineups is a genuine opportunity for players who might otherwise get a period and a handshake. For a prospect trying to earn a job or at least force a conversation, those first two games are the audition. The staff gets a clean look at how the kids handle a real game environment without veterans covering for them.

Why It Matters to Las Vegas Residents

Start with the obvious one. An 84-game regular season means more home dates at T-Mobile Arena. More home dates means more nights when traffic on the Strip corridor is heavier, more nights when restaurants and bars near the arena are packed, and more nights when parking around Las Vegas Boulevard fills up early. If you live or work anywhere near the resort corridor, you feel this on the calendar.

It also means more nights of work for a lot of people in this valley. Arena staff, security, food and beverage, rideshare drivers, and the businesses that live off event traffic all get more shifts out of a longer schedule. Las Vegas is an events economy, and hockey is now a steady part of that calendar from October through the spring. Two extra games on the schedule is a small change on paper and a real change for anyone whose paycheck moves with the building.

The bigger local story is the churn between Las Vegas and Henderson. A shorter camp and a longer season almost guarantees more player movement over the course of the year. Injuries pile up in a longer schedule. When they do, the Henderson Silver Knights are where the replacements come from. That is a short drive down the 215 from City National Arena in Summerlin to Lee's Family Forum in Henderson, and players go back and forth on it constantly.

For families, that movement is what makes the sport feel close. A player you watched in Henderson in November might be on your television in a Golden Knights sweater in January. Kids who play youth hockey in this valley are watching a real ladder, not an abstract one. That is a different relationship with a team than most cities get, and it is one of the quieter reasons hockey took hold here so fast.

There is also the practice side of it. Training camp practices at City National Arena have been a free, family-friendly thing to do in Summerlin since the team arrived. A shortened camp means fewer of those days on the calendar. If you were planning to take the kids out to watch a session, the window is tighter this year than it has been in past Septembers.

There is one more thing worth naming. A longer season with a shorter runway usually means more young players get real NHL minutes earlier than they otherwise would. That is how depth gets tested. For a valley that has watched this organization build a pipeline from scratch, seeing homegrown players step in and hold their own is the payoff for a decade of building.

Background and History

This is season 10 for the Golden Knights. That is worth sitting with for a second. A decade ago there was no NHL team in Nevada, and the idea that hockey would become a core part of the Las Vegas identity would have sounded like a stretch to a lot of people. Now there is a practice facility in Summerlin, an AHL affiliate in Henderson with its own arena, a growing youth hockey base, and a professional women's hockey team coming into the valley.

The 84-game schedule is the league's move, not the team's. The NHL played an 82-game regular season for decades, and the expansion to 84 changes the rhythm of a season for every club in the league. More games mean more travel, more back-to-backs, and more wear on bodies over the course of a year. Every general manager in the league is thinking about depth differently because of it.

The shortened camp is a compounding factor. Camps have been getting tighter across the league for years as the calendar gets crowded at both ends. When you lose eight days at the front and add games at the back, the margin for error in September gets thin. A team that installs its systems cleanly in a short camp has a real advantage in October. A team that does not spends the first month of the season fixing things in real time.

The two players held out of full participation both reflect how modern hockey organizations operate. Rookie tournaments like the one in San Jose are where young players get evaluated before main camp, and injuries there are common. Offseason surgery followed by non-contact practice is standard procedure now. Clubs bring players back slowly on purpose, because rushing a return in a long season is how a short absence becomes a long one.

Las Vegas also built its hockey culture backwards compared to most markets. In traditional hockey cities, the youth programs came first and the pro team came later. Here the pro team came first and the youth programs grew up underneath it. That is why a facility like City National Arena matters so much locally. It is a practice rink for the pros and a community rink for everyone else, in the same building, on the same day.

What Happens Next

The immediate schedule is the four preseason games. Watch the split closely. Games one and two feature younger lineups, which is where the prospect group gets its audition. Games three and four feature the projected opening-night group, which is the closest look anyone gets at what the real team will be before the season starts.

After that come the roster decisions. Sixty-six players has to become an NHL roster and an AHL roster. Some players get assigned to Henderson. Some get a look and go back to junior or college programs. A handful of jobs will come down to how someone played in two preseason games, which is exactly the kind of pressure a shortened camp creates.

Watch the waiver wire and the assignment news in early October too. That is usually when the last cuts happen and when a few names you did not expect end up in Henderson instead of Las Vegas. In a short camp, those calls get made on thinner evidence than usual, which sometimes means a player gets a second look later in the year.

Then the season starts, and the grind begins. Eighty-four games is a long road. Watch for how the team manages days off, how quickly the staff reaches down to Henderson when injuries hit, and whether the systems installed in a compressed camp hold up under a longer schedule. The first six weeks usually tell you a lot about whether a team got its September right.

Keep an eye on the two players who are not at full participation. A rookie tournament injury and a post-surgery non-contact jersey are both situations with no fixed timeline, and both will be updated as camp goes on. How the organization handles those returns is a small window into how cautious it plans to be with bodies across 84 games.

Ryan's Take

I have watched what pro sports did to this valley in real time, and the housing side of it is not subtle. When the Golden Knights arrived, Summerlin got something it did not have before: a professional sports facility that people drive to on a random weekday morning just to watch practice. City National Arena turned into a neighborhood anchor. Buyers who are looking in Summerlin ask about it. They ask about youth hockey programs, they ask about the drive, and they ask what is walkable nearby. That is a real factor in how people choose a neighborhood here.

Henderson got the same effect in a different form. An AHL team with its own building gives Henderson families a night out that costs a fraction of an NHL ticket, and it gave that side of the valley a piece of the pro sports identity that used to belong entirely to the Strip. When I talk with buyers relocating here, the thing that surprises them most is how much life exists away from Las Vegas Boulevard. A hockey team in Henderson is part of that answer. A longer season and more movement between the two clubs only deepens it.

The practical version of all this is simple. Pro sports built a set of destinations in this valley that are not on the Strip, and those destinations changed how people think about where to live. Summerlin and Henderson both got an anchor. When a market adds places that locals actually use on a Tuesday afternoon, the neighborhoods around them get a little stickier. People stay longer, and they tell their friends. That is the slow, unglamorous way a community gets built, and hockey has been part of it here for ten years now.

What You Can Do

If you want to see camp, go now rather than later. The window is eight days shorter than usual, so the practice days at City National Arena in Summerlin are fewer than in past years. Check the Golden Knights schedule for public practice times before you drive out, since the daily plan can change and a shortened camp leaves less room for adjustments.

If you want hockey without an NHL price tag, look at Henderson. Silver Knights games at Lee's Family Forum are a cheaper night out, the building is easy to get in and out of, and you are watching the same organization's players. For families with young kids, it is often the better first hockey experience because the crowd is smaller and the sight lines are close.

And if your kids want to play, this is a good time to look into local youth programs. The valley has more ice and more organized hockey than it did a decade ago, and the sport is no longer a novelty here. Ask around at the rinks, look at the learn-to-skate options, and go watch a practice before you commit to gear.

Finally, if you are thinking about buying near either arena, go spend an evening in the area first. Drive it on a game night and see what the traffic actually looks like. Some people love living close to that energy and some people want to be twenty minutes away from it. Both answers are fine, but you want to know which one you are before you sign anything.

Have questions about how this affects your home or neighborhood? Reach out to Ryan Rose or text/call 702-747-5921 anytime.

Sources

FOX5 Vegas, "McCrimmon says shortened training camp brings new urgency for Vegas Golden Knights," September 17, 2026.