Pavel Dorofeyev was supposed to be the guy.
For a while, he looked like the best bet the Vegas Golden Knights had ever assembled to chase down a franchise first: a 50-goal season. He had the shot, the power-play finishing touch, and, according to the source material, the single-season team mark for power-play goals with 20 in 2025-26.
Then he was traded.
And just like that, Vegas was back to staring at a glaring blank in its record book. The Golden Knights still have never had a player score 50 goals in a season, and Dorofeyev leaving for the New York Rangers only sharpened the question of who, if anyone, will be the first to do it.
The list of candidates on the current roster is thin. Mitch Marner’s career best is 35 goals in 2021-22.
Jack Eichel’s top mark is 36 in 2019-20. Mark Stone has reached 33, which came in 2018-19.
William Karlsson’s 43-goal season in 2017-18 remains the high-water mark in franchise history, and it is still the closest Vegas has come.
That’s the heart of the issue: there just isn’t an obvious 50-goal scorer sitting in the room right now.
Vegas is one of eight teams that have never had a player hit the 50-goal plateau in franchise history. The Golden Knights are a young organization - they began play in 2017 - so the company they’re keeping makes sense. The Minnesota Wild, Utah Mammoth and Seattle Kraken are also on that list.
The door to a 50-goal season isn’t completely shut, but it would take something unusual. The Golden Knights could land a former 50-goal scorer on a PTO, though that’s no easy task.
They could also swing big on a player with that kind of upside, like Jason Robertson. But the source material makes the larger point: the league hasn’t been churning out 50-goal seasons all that often, and nobody had reached that mark when Vegas entered the NHL in 2017-18.
If the Golden Knights ever get there, it will require more than just one hot scorer. Marner and Stone would need to shoulder more of the finishing load.
The team would also have to stay healthy for an entire season, which has been a problem throughout its history. Injuries have repeatedly disrupted Vegas, and that has helped keep the franchise from producing a 50-goal player.
There’s also the way the Golden Knights are built. Since Gerard Gallant started the whole thing, the organization has leaned into distribution.
That approach has produced multiple 50-plus assist seasons, including David Perron’s 50 in 2017-18, Eichel’s 66 in 2024-25 and 63 in 2025-26, and Marner’s 56 in 2025-26. Vegas has not been about feeding one finisher over and over.
It has been about finding the best shot available.
That style has worked. The Golden Knights have reached the postseason in every season except 2021-22, made three Stanley Cup Final appearances and won a Stanley Cup. So even if the franchise still hasn’t produced its first 50-goal scorer, the organization has clearly been doing enough the way it wants to do it.
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Golden Knights Close One Misfits Chapter As Holtz Faces Real Pressure
Brad Hunt has quietly closed the book on a long NHL career, one that included a place on the Golden Knights inaugural run to the Stanley Cup Final. For Vegas, it is a reminder of how quickly the early roster built around misfits and opportunists has aged out of the picture, with another familiar name now stepping away after 10 seasons in the league.
The present-day pressure, though, sits with Alexander Holtz. The forward has not matched the expectations that followed him to Vegas, and after two uneven seasons he is staring at a pivotal year that could shape whether he remains part of the plan. With the final season of his contract ahead, Holtz does not just need a bounce-back, he needs a convincing one. [Read more 🡒]
Golden Knights Keep Earning The Long Term Trust Other Teams Lost
Around the NHL, a wide swath of fans still seems to view the Pacific Division through a skeptical lens, with a recent Athletic survey of about 20,000 respondents putting five division teams near the top of the list of clubs they are least confident will win a Stanley Cup before 2036. The Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers and Anaheim Ducks were among the teams drawing that distrust, a reminder of how hard it is for a franchise to earn long-term belief in this league.
Vegas has managed to stay on the other side of that equation. The Golden Knights have built sustained competitiveness through a salary-cap strategy that has kept the roster balanced, and their front office continues to be a major reason they are viewed differently from so many of their division rivals. There are legitimate questions about an aging roster, but the organization has earned the benefit of the doubt in a way few teams can claim. [Read more 🡒]