2025-26 NHL team preview: Vegas Golden Knights

LAST SEASON

By Vegas Golden Knights standards, 2024-25 was…tame? They punted no first-round picks, chased no shiny new toys, and the only meaningful trade they made all season was reacquiring Original Misfit Reilly Smith. Vegas remained a top-tier Stanley Cup contender, however, posting the second-highest point total in its eight-season history and winning the Pacific Division. The Golden Knights were fuelled by the best season of superstar center Jack Eichel’s career, in which he posted 94 points and finished top five in the Hart and Selke Trophy votes. Tomas Hertl, one of their splashy additions from the season prior, regained his 30-goal touch in a relatively healthy campaign, while Pavel Dorofeyev delivered one of the season’s biggest surprise breakouts.

Still, after getting past the Minnesota Wild in a hard-fought six-game series in Round 1, the Golden Knights didn’t have the firepower to hang with the mighty Edmonton Oilers, shoved aside in five games. It never felt like Vegas was in the series, and that defeat was enough to reactivate the Death Star, evidently. General manager Kelly McMcrimmon got back to his big-game hunting ways this past summer with an explosive sign-and-trade to lure superstar right winger Mitch Marner out of Toronto and into Sin City.

The Golden Knights were already a first-place outfit. Now they’ve added one of the best players of the past decade. Are they the team to beat in the Western Conference?

KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES

Additions

Mitch Marner, RW
Jeremy Lauzon, D
Colton Sissons, C
Jaycob Megna, D
Cole Reinhardt, LW
Dylan Coghlan, D

Departures

Nicolas Roy, C (Tor)
Nic Hague, D (Nsh)
Victor Olofsson, RW (Col)
Ilya Samsonov, G (UFA)

OFFENSE

The Golden Knights were one of the most potent offensive clubs in the NHL last season, finishing fifth in goals and second in power-play efficiency. Their numbers weren’t lucky, either, as they ranked among the top teams in the league at generating scoring chances and high-danger chances at 5-on-5. Part of what made them so dangerous was their depth. They did have Eichel playing at a borderline MVP level, yes, but they had five 20-plus-goal scorers, including 35 from Dorofeyev and 32 from Hertl, not to mention point-per-game production from Mark Stone.

There’s reason to believe the Golden Knights will score more than ever this season. Marner is fresh off a career-best 102 points and, since debuting in the NHL in 2016-17, has only been outscored by seven players. He’s an elite facilitator who makes others around him better; only Nikita Kucherov, Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon averaged more primary assists per 60 at all strengths in 2024-25. Marner’s speed and creativity could help Eichel top even last year’s elite season. With those two set to play alongside Ivan Barbashev on the top line, Vegas has the luxury of using Stone on the second line, likely with Smith and William Karlsson, while Vegas’ two 30-goal guys project to work on the third line in Hertl and Dorofeyev, and 23-goal scorer Brett Howden is a fourth-liner. That’s elite depth, and Vegas will get additional scoring help from puck-moving blueliners Shea Theodore and Noah Hanifin.

DEFENSE

Only two teams allowed fewer goals than Vegas last season. They did a strong job at 5-on-5 keeping shots and scoring chances to a minimum. They return a nice mix of mobility (Theodore, Hanifin) and sandpaper (Brayden McNabb, Zach Whitecloud) and, just as importantly, the likes of Stone, Eichel and William Karlsson continue to provide high-end defensive work from the forward group. While it hurts to lose solid defensive third-line center Nicolas Roy, who went to Toronto in the Marner deal, Marner brings a strong 200-foot presence of his own. A one-time Selke Trophy finalist, he’s the best puck thief in the entire league, leading all NHLers in takeaways over the past five seasons. He’s also a seasoned penalty killer, which could give Vegas a needed boost given its penalty kill was a major weakness last season, sitting 26^th in the NHL at 75.7 percent.

The Golden Knights’ other new additions, arriving from the Nashville Predators in a summer trade for Nic Hague, could impact their defensive play, too. The bodychecking machine Jeremy Lauzon should be a blunter version of Hague, while Sissons has a respectable defensive game as a bottom-six forward.

GOALTENDING

It’s weird to say Adin Hill entered last season untested as a starter given he’d backstopped Vegas to a 2022-23 Stanley Cup with a stellar playoff run, but Hill had never started more than 35 games before 2024-25. His 6-foot-4, 222-pound frame wilted a bit in 2023-24, enduring multiple injuries. But Hill proved up for the bigger workload last season, starting a career-high 50 games and winning 32 of them. Among 30 goaltenders who started at least half their teams’ games last season, he was 11^th in goals saved above expected per 60, grading out as a solidly above-average starter.

It’s a good thing Hill has settled in as more of a workhorse, though, as the safety net behind him has quite a few tears in it. His backup has gone from Logan Thompson two years ago to Ilya Samsonov last year to…Akira Schmid? He excelled in limited duty for the New Jersey Devils two seasons ago, but his game toileted the following season, and while he looked great with Vegas last year, the sample size was five games and three starts. It’s a little shocking to see a team with serious championship aspirations betting on a goaltender who doesn’t even have a good AHL resume, let alone NHL. It would be a mild surprise if Vegas didn’t add a veteran No. 2 at some point this season – unless Schmid realizes his potential and proves to be a huge find.

COACHING

Bruce Cassidy’s first three seasons behind Vegas’ bench include the 2022-23 Stanley Cup win and the sixth-highest points percentage in the NHL across 246 regular-season games. His teams are hardworking, hyper-prepared and conscientious at both ends of the ice. All those traits make him better suited to a veteran group than a young one. The Golden Knights are the ninth-oldest team in the NHL, with an average age of 28.96.

ROOKIES

See above. The Golden Knights aren’t typically a fertile training environment for rookies, and they have very little experience developing top-drawer prospects considering they have traded away 10 of their 11 first-round picks in franchise history (some before making the pick, some after). Left winger Trevor Connelly is the one first-round pick they still own and has some dynamic offensive skill. Slowed by a lower-body injury sustained at the 2025 World Junior Summer Showcase, he’s likely to spend the majority of 2025-26 in the AHL, having only earned a taste of the pros late last season there, but could be among the first call-up options if one of Vegas’ scoring forwards get hurt. The Golden Knights also have several mid-range prospects in the AHL who could earn looks, including goaltender Carl Lindbom.

BURNING QUESTIONS

1. Can Vegas help Mitch Marner unlock his clutch gene? Marner is a truly special regular-season hockey player who should earn a Hall of Fame call someday. But his waif-like frame tends to phase him out during the toughest trench warfare of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Over the past seven seasons, Marner has no goals and seven points in 21 playoff contests across Games 5, 6 and 7 of a series. Even the biggest Marner apologist must admit that’s a staggering stat. But he joins a Golden Knights dressing room featuring 12 Stanley Cup winners, 11 of whom lifted the chalice together as Golden Knights in 2022-23 – and that doesn’t even include injured defenseman Alex Pietrangelo. Will the combination of playing with proven clutch performers and escaping the pressure of a Canadian market finally help Marner breathe during do-or-die moments?

2. Will Alex Pietrangelo return after all? Pietrangelo, a Stanley Cup champ with two different franchises and a stalwart as one of Vegas’ top four defensemen, was set to miss all of 2025-26 and possibly never play again due to his body’s need for bilateral femur reconstruction. But earlier this month, he revealed he been rehabbing instead of going the surgery route and that he hasn’t ruled out returning later this season. Before anyone rolls their eyes and fires up the Vegas LTIR joke machine: remember, the playoff salary cap rule comes into affect this postseason, meaning every team’s starting lineup will have to be cap compliant and Pietrangelo’s $8.8-million AAV can’t be converted to magical dust like Stone’s cap number was in 2022-23 and 2023-24 coming off back and spleen injuries.

3. Is Pavel Dorofeyev for real? The Russian sniper always had potential in his stick, but he’d never even scored 35 goals in the AHL, let alone the NHL, before the explosion. The specific nature of his 2024-25 production suggests he can duplicate it: his shooting percentage was in line with his career norm, and he was incredibly productive relative to his ice time. Only eight forwards averaged more shots on goal per 60 at 5-on-5.

PREDICTION

You take an already-deep first place team and you add a two-time first-team All-Star to it…so you can probably guess the prediction here. The Golden Knights are stacked and have shifted from great to elite. They are the class of the Western Conference and rank among the top two or three Stanley Cup contenders in the league. They may have to make some tweaks to deepen their D-corps and their goaltending battery, but few if any teams are as good at addressing their needs. The LTIR rule change could force McCrimmon to get more creative than normal, however.