The Vegas Golden Knights have announced that top defenseman Shea Theodore is out week-to-week after undergoing a successful surgery. The surgery addressed the upper-body injury that has held Theodore out since Nov. 22, although no other specifics were shared.
Theodore was in the midst of a fantastic start to the season, netting four goals and 18 points in 20 games so far this year. That mark leads the Golden Knights’ defensemen in scoring, despite Theodore missing the team’s last three games.
In fact, the team’s second-highest-scoring defender, Alex Pietrangelo, only has nine points this season — half of Theodore’s total. Theodore also leads the team’s blue line in xGF% (expected goals-for-percentage) and ranks third in CF% (corsi-for-percentage), speaking to the prowess he’s had on the offensive side of the puck this year.
Theodore’s hot start comes in the wake of an impressive 2022-23 season, where the defenseman netted 41 points in 55 games, or 0.75 points per game. That was the second-highest point-per-game pace of Theodore’s career, only matched by the 42 points he scored in 53 games in the 2020-21 season.
He has totaled 470 NHL games through his nine-year career, scoring 70 goals and 282 points. 417 of these games have come with Vegas, who took him from the Anaheim Ducks in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft.
Vegas is currently rostering ten different defenders, with Theodore and Daniil Miromanov on the team’s injured reserve, Alec Martinez currently day-to-day with injury and scratched and Brayden Pachal serving as the healthy extra defenseman.
Pachal slotted into the lineup while Zach Whitecloud was out with injury, playing in 13 games and recording one point.
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