On Tuesday night, the Golden Knights recorded 37 shots on goal in their 5-2 opening night victory over the Chicago Blackhawks. It was the most SOG for Vegas in a season debut since 2022, and the 2nd most in an opener ever. Shockingly, Vegas landed 51 shots on opening night in the 2022-23 campaign. Mr. Jack “please shoot more” Eichel registered an astounding seven shots on goal that evening. This season, Eichel has started off with two shots and a 50% shooting percentage.
However, it wasn’t only Vegas’ forwards creating shooting chances on Tuesday night; VGK’s defensemen also got in on the action against the Blackhawks. The Golden Knights received 11 shots from the blueline, including five from Rasmus Andersson and Noah Hanifin. Only Trevor Connelly, Tomas Hertl and Mitch Marner exceeded 3 SOG in Game 1 of 84. Heck, even Jeremy Lauzon took three shots on Chicago’s net. If coach Ryan Craig drew up a game plan that called for more blueline shots, he got it from his group of six.
The free agency dinner bell is set to ring in two days, and the Golden Knights have plenty of business to take care of. Understandably, most of the focus has been on VGK sniffing around some of the biggest names available, but they also have a lot of work to do with their own players set to hit free agency. Here’s a quick look at each player set to hit the market’s situation, projected contract value, and a prediction of his future in Vegas.
From the moment the Golden Knights acquired Andersson from the Flames, it was pretty clear they were going to re-sign him. Andersson’s play was a bit sporadic during his time in Vegas, especially in the Stanley Cup Final, but he has shown more than enough upside to prove to be worth an extension. We’ve reported, as have others, that the Golden Knights and Andersson agreed to a contract outline months ago and still believe that deal will come through in the extremely near future.
Coghlan returned to the Vegas organization last summer looking for an opportunity to break back through at the NHL level despite a pretty deep defense corps. It took him a long time to finally do it, but once he did, he made quite the impact at quite the time. He played just three games in the regular season before appearing in 13 during the playoffs and five of the six Stanley Cup Final games. He proved to be up to the task, which actually could make life a bit more difficult on VGK. Other teams will be lurking on a player who has never signed a deal worth more than six figures annually. That may change this summer.
Prediction: $1,000,000 one-way contract for 2 years with VGK
The Golden Knights have spent a lot of time, money, and assets rebuilding their defense after a career-ending injury to Alex Pietrangelo.
Shea Theodore and Brayden McNabb have been asked to step into the first pair role. VGK spent major assets to bring in Noah Hanifin and Rasmus Andersson. They swapped Nic Hague out for Jeremy Lauzon and have tasked Kaedan Korczak to fill Zach Whitecloud’s shoes.
It hasn’t gone as swimmingly as the Golden Knights would have hoped, but it certainly has not been bad. VGK currently rank 3rd in shots allowed per game, yet sit in 19th in goals against. Some of the blame, maybe most, lies at the feet of the goaltending, however, the new-look defense have had some issues themselves.
A specific issue they’ve struggled with recently cropped up once again last night against the Wild as they allowed three goals in a little more than three minutes.
The first one’s a tough one. There’s miscommunication, they get a breakaway, and they score. Not the end of the world, we’re playing fine. But the next two we had pucks below the goal line to break out. We didn’t execute. That was a big problem all night. Big problem. -Bruce Cassidy
The Golden Knights dug themselves a deep hole by starting slow, then managed to turn it around and make a game of it, ultimately falling short.
What you’ve seen out of this team is poor starts and great finishes all year. Starts can be in us, we’ve had good starts, so it’s there, but obviously it’s my job to get it out of them. And it’s their job as professionals. They’ve watched the same movie too, and at some point it’s like ‘ok guys, let’s put an end to this.’ -Bruce Cassidy
This franchise has done well at steering clear of frustration, but it’s clearly sinking in following the last two games in Alberta.
As far as the start, not good enough again, and now we’re paying the price. Let’s learn from that. I’ve used that line a lot.
As a coach, you are sort of like, ‘do we have to revisit this again?’ And the players do they want to hear it again? So just own it, just frickin’ own it, and let’s move past it and correct it and build our game that we know we’re capable of doing. -Cassidy
VGK have allowed the first goal in four consecutive games and have trailed at some point in 11 of the last 14 games. They’ve allowed the first goal in 20 of their 34 games, the fourth most in the league. They also currently rank 29th in the NHL in time spent leading ahead of only Los Angeles, Nashville, and Seattle. The Golden Knights have held the lead for a measly 25.5% of the time this season.
Before this past road trip, the deficits typically haven’t extended beyond one or two goals. With Jack Eichel, Shea Theodore, and William Karlsson all sidelined in the last two, it’s ballooned to four goals each game.
The Golden Knights are cooking offensively through six games this season. They’ve scored a whopping 26 goals to lead the league and a few individual players are posting gaudy numbers to open the year.
Jack Eichel currently leads the NHL in points with 15. Mark Stone is right behind him in 2nd with 13. Stone also leads the league in assists with 11. Pavel Dorofeyev’s six goals are behind only Shane Pinto. Eichel leads the league in shots on goal with 30. Jeremy Lauzon’s 26 hits ranks in the Top 10. Brayden McNabb’s 21 blocks has him one off the league lead despite playing one fewer game than Boston’s Andrew Peek (22 hits).
This team has started out hot under Bruce Cassidy in each of his four seasons in Vegas, so it may feel like the individual numbers are like this every year, but they really aren’t. Here’s a look at the leaders in each statistical category through the first six games of each Golden Knights season.
Training Camp will officially get underway this week, with on-ice practices set to start on Thursday morning. The Golden Knights enter their 9th season with extremely high expectations once again, which means there’s a lot to see when the team takes the ice for the first time together.
Here are the five things I’ll have my eyes focused on as camp opens up.
Marner and Eichel together?
There are excellent arguments for both sides of the Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner together or separate battle, and it’s going to be one of the biggest storylines of the season all year long, so it’ll be interesting to see which way Bruce Cassidy leans to open camp. Marner stepping onto the top line with Eichel and Ivan Barbashev may offer some of the most continuity to the lineup that was in place when the season ended last year. However, Mark Stone was so good in that spot that it’s hard to believe they’ll go away from it straight away to start this year. As always, nothing is set in stone, and it will obviously change multiple times over the course of the year, but Cassidy has had three months to think about how he wants to use Marner in his lineup, so the first place we see him does offer a window into the head coach’s mind.
When the Golden Knights completed the trade that sent Nic Hague to the Nashville Predators in exchange for Colton Sissons and Jeremy Lauzon, it was assumed both of the new guys would step right into the starting lineup.
Lauzon missed the second half of last season with an injury, but has played 146 games in the previous two seasons, posted nearly 18 minutes of ice time a night, and led the NHL in hits in 23-24. Lauzon carries a $2 million AAV cap hit and fills a “need” the Golden Knights lacked last season.
On our blue line, we look for Kaedan Korczak to become an everyday player. I think Ben Hutton has a lot more to give than people realize. We think he’s a good player. And we’ve got some really good players above those guys. –McCrimmon to The Athletic
Hutton played just 11 games last season, has played only 179 in the past five seasons combined (an average of 36 per season), and has been used in just three playoff games for a total of 41 minutes in VGK’s last 39 playoff games.
Hutton has been the ideal 7th defenseman for the Golden Knights for a variety of reasons, none more important than his personality. He’s shown an ability to step right into games despite long layoffs and has a surprising amount of offensive upside when he does get in there. However, Bruce Cassidy has pretty much always gone a different route when given the option of Hutton against someone else.
Kaedan Korczak, Brayden Pachal, Daniil Miromanov, and Dylan Coghlan (who is back on the roster now) have all gotten the nod over Hutton at different points. This vote of confidence from McCrimmon may be a signal that the team plans on using Hutton straight out of the gates.
It’s certainly possible the comment is a hedge against the possibility of Lauzon not having overcome his injury yet, but the way Hutton’s name is dropped out of the blue reads more like McCrimmon believes he’s the first option.
Either way, there aren’t many training camp battles heading into the 2025-26 season. Aside from where all the locked-in starters land in the lineup, the fight for the final spot on the blue line may be the most important decision that must be made before October 9th.
