Golden Knights Do Not Lack Scoring Options, If Healthy

Way back before the Golden Knights ever played their first game the noise surrounding the team was mostly about their lack of scoring. How would a team headed up by James Neal, David Perron, and Cody Eakin score enough goals to win games in their first season?

Honestly, it all made sense as the names on the paper didn’t inspire a ton of confidence that VGK would become the high-scoring machine they were in Year 1. However, before the season I went through an exercise that opened my eyes about the possibilities of that team and it may be time to do it again.

I looked at every player on the roster’s career high in scoring to see how many goals were actually on the roster. It seems a bit ridiculous, but go back and read the story, it ended up being kind of spot-on.

So, let’s try it again.

Last year’s Golden Knights finished the season with 263 goals, good for 14th in the NHL. That included career highs from just four players; Jonathan Marchessault (42), Pavel Dorofeyev (13), Keegan Kolesar (8), and Noah Hanifin (13). VGK got fewer than 60 games out of Mark Stone, Shea Theodore, Dorofeyev, and of course Hanifin.

Now, obviously, it’s insane to expect every player on the team to reach their career high in goals, but play along for a second so you can see how the goal-scoring prowess is still on the roster even despite the free agent exodus this summer.

Aston-Reese: 10
Barbashev: 26
Brisson: 2
Dorofeyev: 13
Eichel: 36
Hertl: 30
Holtz: 16
Howden: 9
Karlsson: 43
Kolesar: 8
Olafsson: 28
Rondbjerg (or Laczynski): 2
Roy: 15
Stone: 33

Hague: 5
Hanifin: 13
Hutton: 5
Korczak: 1
McNabb: 5
Pietrangelo: 16
Theodore: 14
Whitecloud: 8

That’s 271 goals from 14 forwards and 67 more from eight defensemen. 338 goals would be the most in the NHL since 1996. When I did this same exercise for the expansion team, they had 243 goals which was barely in the top half of the league the previous season.

Career highs are rare, so instead, what if we just use career averages? On Hockey-Reference.com they compile each player’s 82-game average in goals, assists, and points based on their career stats. For instance, Mark Stone’s average is 28 goals, Eichel’s is 32 and Theodore’s is 12 while younger guys like Dorofeyev is 24 and Brisson is 11. Many will likely come in above this number while others will come below it. Nonetheless, it should give a decent ballpark of what to expect.

Aston-Reese: 10
Barbashev: 16
Brisson: 11
Dorofeyev: 24
Eichel: 32
Hertl: 25
Holtz: 14
Howden: 9
Karlsson: 20
Kolesar: 8
Olafsson: 24
Rondbjerg (or Laczynski): 4
Roy: 15
Stone: 28

Hague: 4
Hanifin: 8
Hutton: 4
Korczak: 2
McNabb: 3
Pietrangelo: 12
Theodore: 12
Whitecloud: 6

That’s 291 total goals for the team which would have ranked them 5th in the NHL last year, ahead of Tampa Bay, right behind Edmonton.

There’s a lot of potential error in looking at the numbers this way, especially because 22 players can’t play 82 games, but it still gives an idea of what is possible.

Yes, a lot of players are stepping into bigger roles and there are undoubtedly holes in the lineup that will need to be filled, but this VGK team isn’t anywhere close to devoid of goal-scoring talent. It may have made sense to question the 2017-18 team based on what they were boasting as an offense and we all know how that went. With this team, the scoring is there in droves, they just need to be healthy enough to play the number of games required to bring it out.