The Golden Knights played their first game on October 6, 2017, against the Dallas Stars with James Neal scoring the franchise's first two goals en route to a 2-1 victory.

Unlike most expansion teams, the Golden Knights were competitive right from the start, reaching the Stanley Cup Finals in their very first year of operation. With 13 playoff wins en route to the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals, they set a record for postseason wins by an expansion team. In the Finals, however, they were defeated by the Washington Capitals, four games to one.

The number 58 was retired by the team on March 31, 2018, in honor of the 58 victims killed in the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting.

In addition to providing 35 assists and an NHL-high plus-minus rating of +45, William Karlsson, nicknamed "Wild Bill", ended 2017-18 with 43 goals, setting a new NHL record for goals scored by a player in an expansion team's inaugural season.

Fleury is known by the nickname "Flower", derived from the English translation of his last name (in French, fleuri means "in bloom" or "in flower"). His goaltender masks always feature a fleur-de-lis on the backplate (in addition to the initials EFGT, honouring his four grandparents in memoriam), and have frequently featured some sort of flower on the front artwork as well.

Chance the Gila Monster (pronounced HEE-luh) is a venomous lizard native to desert areas in the southwestern United States. According to the team website, most gila monsters live in seclusion their whole lives and have little interaction with the outside world, but when Chance learned that major professional hockey was coming to Las Vegas, he emerged from his underground burrow at Red Rock Canyon and made his way to City National Arena in Summerlin to see what all the excitement was about. Like many newcomers to the sport, he fell in love with hockey and the Golden Knights.

In their inaugural season, the team sent three Knights to the All-Star Game: goaltender Marc-André Fleury, right winger James Neal, and head coach Gerard Gallant.

Fifteen games into the 2017-18 season, Vadim Shipachyov became the first player to retire from the NHL as a Golden Knight when he decided to return to the Kontinental Hockey League.

Karlsson scored his first career NHL hat-trick on December 31, 2017, against the Toronto Maple Leafs, during the Golden Knights inaugural season. He scored his second career NHL hat-trick on March 18, 2018, against the Calgary Flames.

In the 2018-19 season, the Golden Knights returned to the playoffs but were defeated in the First Round by the San Jose Sharks. During the 2019-20 season, the Golden Knights fired head coach Gallant and replaced him with recently fired Sharks' head coach Peter DeBoer.