Mark Stone is officially on the best scoring streak in the history of the Vegas Golden Knights. With his two goals and an assist last night, he pushed his franchise-best point streak to a whopping 14 games. During the streak, he has scored an incredible 12 goals and 23 points, including two game-winning goals, while posting a +8 rating.
Since December 29th, when the streak began, Stone leads the NHL in goals, and only Nikita Kucherov has more points with 27 to Stone’s 23. Stone is shooting at an insane 38.7% rate, having scored on 12 of his last 31 shots.
What’s even more amazing, though,is that the streak isn’t really an outlier this season for the Golden Knights’ captain.
Stone has scored a point in 31 of the 33 games he’s played this season. An injury interrupted his start to the season, but in the first 14 games he played, he scored a point in every single game as well. So, this isn’t even really his first 14-game point streak of the year. Over that stretch he was much more of a distributor, though with six goals and 18 assists.
Even missing 16 games, Stone is still on pace for 101 points. He’s also on pace to set career highs in goals, trending towards 39. He has already set his career best mark in power play goals with seven and he’s just seven power play assists from breaking his career high of 20, which he set last year.
Stone has done a lot of damage on the familiar line with Ivan Barbashev and Jack Eichel, but he’s played fewer than half of his games on that line. He’s played with four different centers (Eichel, Howden, Karlsson, Marner) and five different wingers (Barbashev, Marner, Smith, Howden, Dorofeyev) and it hasn’t slowed him down even the slightest.
Simply put, Stone is currently playing the best hockey of his career, at the age of 33, after multiple seasons riddled with injuries, and without the benefit of a stable line. No matter the situation, he’s been absolutely dominant this season and there are no signs of it slowing down.
knights fan in minny
Amazing run
Emmanuel
Forget about Stone, I just wanna see Eichels Pizza commercial again.
SHS
The Captain gathers no moss! What a streak!
Vic
Healthy Stone is the key. He’s battled back so many times, and is extremely dangerous at 100% all over the ice. Having Jack finding you with passes does help. Health is a major ingredient for going far in the playoffs as well as goalies who can keep goals against lower than 3, maybe even 2. Peaking in April, May and June will get it done. The AVs had fun peaking from Oct-Dec and are beginning to question themselves. The VGK have found speed and passion which are both vital to being a champion. Kind of sorry the Olympics will slow down the VGK’s momentum, but same goes for other teams.
Pistol Pete
I inquired to Kelly McCrimmon requesting feedback on the speedy Jackson Hallum asking if perhaps he was developing Bowman-like strength on the puck. He did not comment on strength on the puck but he did have this to say:
“You really notice the speed, we’ve never had anyone there skate like he does.”
Hopefully Hallum can apply his speed and agility and advance to the NHL level. He’ll need to get strong in traffic strong on the walls all of that. No points last night against Tucson, however Tuomas Uronen scored twice relieving something like a
15 games long points drought.
Pistol Pete
This reminds me of a few years ago when Kelly provided me feedback on Pav ahead of his call up something like “Bigger, stronger, more in the play, very encouraging”. Hopefully my interest in Hallum and the response from Kelly is as predictive of the future as it was with Pav. Hopefully!
TS
Stoney is a machine with fire inside! I can’t imagine our team without him! He’s the high- octane fuel that makes the team car run optimally, and we’ve been lucky to call him Captain!
Pistol Pete
Saad (drafted #43) vs. Reinhart (drafted #181):
We can see 25 year/old Cole Reinhart will never ever be Brandon Saad. This does not however mean today he’s not a better choice than Saad as fourth line winger. Only Cassidy can decide when to scratch Saad but obviously once he’s off IR he’ll go back in for Reinhart more than likely.
Reinhart turns 26 in February here is where Saad stood entering the season age 25.
368GP/107G/125A (+68) 24G/82 games.
Reinhard career:
52GP/3G/5A (-5)
Not saying Cassidy should or should not play Reinhart in place of Saad. Saad’s finishing has markedly declined and he’s become injury prone. Cassidy still uses him on the PK. Only time will tell on Brandon Saad but a full or even partial resurgence does seem less and less likely.
Pistol Pete
My little analysis on Saad above better Saad vs. not Reinhart he was out of the lineup vs. TOR. Saad vs. Holtz maybe? My best guess is Saad goes in on the Smith line.
Marner still back on wing. Looks like Hill vs. MTL.
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Golden Knights projected lineup
Ivan Barbashev — Jack Eichel — Mark Stone
Mitch Marner — Tomas Hertl — Pavel Dorofeyev
Jonas Rondbjerg — Reilly Smith — Keegan Kolesar
Braeden Bowman — Tanner Laczynski — Alexander Holtz
Jeremy Lauzon — Shea Theodore
Noah Hanifin — Rasmus Andersson
Ben Hutton — Kaedan Korczak
Akira Schmid
Adin Hill
Scratched: Dylan Coghlan, Cole Reinhardt
Injured: Carter Hart (lower body), Brett Howden (lower body), William Karlsson (lower body), Brayden McNabb (upper body), Brandon Saad (undisclosed), Colton Sissons (upper body)
JB
Sens played last night and lost,so back to back for them. Need to jump on them early!
Larry
Pete, there will NOT be a Smith line NOR will there be a Saad on that or any other line moving forward, for if either of those is reality our CUP chances would be nil.
Until such time things are corrected, Marner should center the 2nd line and Hertl the 3rd, that is a more balanced top 9.
Pistol Pete
Larry I too had Marner slotted in at center with Karlsson out for the season. Marner on wing again today. Looks like Cassidy is serious about Smith taking Karlsson’s place. Seems unlikely to be the final version. 32 games left so we’ll see how it develops. I do think the Hertl line is better 5 on 5 and defensively with Marner pretty sure that is Cassidy’s strategy. I agree though better center depth with Marner unless amazingly enough a Smith line really works!
Hill starting again looks like could be saving Schmid for MTL the bigger game.
Pistol Pete
Smith line sure has not been good against the Sens. Looks like we see Smith-Marner-Pav on Tuesday.
Not one damn thing good about this one. Looking to get on the board to avoid the worst SO in team history the worst goal margin loss in team history!
SHS
PP – we need to win as many games as we can. Ottawa should have been an easy victory, but Hill was not up to the task. Yes, the team is playing badly today but a goaltender cannot allow 7 goals into his net. He should not be playing. Schmid should have played today and again vs. MTL. We can think about sitting Hill when Hart comes back. The problem is going to be in the playoffs when we don’t have the luxury, nor the available salary cap, to go with 3 goalies. How do we unload Hill’s salary when no one will want him?
Walt
Vgk motto= “a Hill to die on”
Schmid has been the only reliable goalie all season, but now they basically are telling him to go sit at the end of the bench kid, and now watch our 6 million dollar man take over.
big effin mistake,,, bigtime
SHS
Walt – Unfortunately this is very true. 7-0 down to Ottawa late 3rd period. Hill does not have it and hopefully the coaches and front office realize it. He should not be our #1 goalie. I don’t how they are going to unload his $6 million AAV salary, because I don’t think anyone would want him.