Hot damn.

The Vegas Golden Knights are headed to the Western Conference final in their first season of existence.

Eat your hearts out, vast majority of NHL teams.

So how is it possible that so many franchises that have had the luxury of decades and decades to build their programs have been lapped by one as green as it is golden?

We won’t speak for them — but we do have a pretty strong handle on how this became possible.

Here are five reasons why the 8-2 Golden Knights are halfway to winning the Stanley Cup in their expansion season:

1. Marc-Andre Fleury

If you ask me, the Golden Knights used flawed logic in selecting Fleury from the Pittsburgh Penguins in the expansion draft. Ambassador, yes, but if the plan was to build a team that could contend five or six years down the road, why choose a 32-year-old, apparently in decline, and recently pinched from his position by a goaltender that was born a decade after him?

Fortunately for VGK, they evaluate talent far better than they were willing to give themselves credit for at the outset.

Fleury has been the rock that Vegas and its legitimately good roster has needed to succeed in the postseason. Half of their wins have come on Fleury shutouts and his .951 save rate is an extraordinary mark, and achieved while dealing with more shots than any other netminder in the tournament.

2. Other GMs are not so smart

This wouldn’t be possible without incompetence elsewhere.

We could go roster position by roster position, but for the sake of brevity let’s set our focus to the top and accept that there were similar mistakes made across the board.

The Panthers, apparently convinced that their jewel from the summer previous — Jonathan Marchessault — couldn’t repeat his 30-goal season, chose to give him and his bargain-bin contract away as a vehicle to rid themselves of the apparently problematic Rielly Smith. They did this without considering the fact that Smith might have suffered from an outlier season himself.

Naturally, Smith’s shooting percentage evened out and Marchessault elevated his own star, with the two forming a union that would provide the foundation for a top line.

3. Sharks in the boardroom

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As dominant as they are, the Rielly-Marchessault partnership needed a third to realize their potential as a line that could match any in the Western Conference. That’s where the George McPhee-led braintrust flexed its muscles.

Feasting on another team willing to pay the premium for extra reserve spots, the Golden Knights had their choice of three players to pair with a first-round pick under the condition that they would take David Clarkson’s dead contract from the Columbus Blue Jackets.

William Karlsson, he of six goals and 25 points the previous season, was one of the three players innocently made available. And despite, to all appearances, better options available, it was Karlsson they paired with the No. 1 pick to little fanfare.

Forty-three goals later, Karlsson saw a 139 percent increase on his career total in one season with the Golden Knights.

Elsewhere, Vegas pocketed two other pieces for its top nine — Alex Tuch and Erik Haula — in a similar agreement with the Minnesota Wild.

4. Gerard Gallant

For as much credit as hockey operations deserves, there is something incidental about the Golden Knights’ success. And it’s not something they hide. Like us, Vegas’s executive team didn’t expect the franchise to be in this position so soon.

What shouldn’t be a surprise is the work of their head coach.

From employing the breakneck style that plays to the strength of his roster to not forcing Tomas Tatar into the lineup just because he was acquired for an expensive package at the deadline, Gallant, thought of as the ultimate players’ coach, has obviously pressed all the right buttons since being appointed the first coach in franchise history.

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