The Vegas Golden Knights’ 2026-27 regular season begins and ends on home ice, with Chicago coming to town on September 29 and the Los Angeles Kings closing things out at T-Mobile Arena on April 10.
The schedule comes with a few notable shifts around the league calendar. The NHL has trimmed the preseason and added two regular-season games, but without a month-long Olympic break, the season doesn’t get squeezed quite as tightly as it otherwise would.
For Vegas, that means a slate with eight back-to-backs, which is down from 12 in 2025-26. Five of those sets are road-road situations, and none will feature both games at home.
The Golden Knights also have a pair of five-game homestands on the docket. Each one stretches across an eight-day span, giving them two of their longest stays in Las Vegas during the season.
On the road, there are no two-week trips to worry about this time. Instead, Vegas has five separate four-game road swings. Two of those trips last seven days, one runs six days, and the other two cover five days.
A couple of dates stand out for familiar faces returning to town. Keegan Kolesar’s return game comes on February 15, when the Golden Knights host the Detroit Red Wings at 7 p.m. PST.
Just four days later, Vegas heads to Texas for a Stadium Series matchup against the Dallas Stars at AT&T Stadium on February 19, with puck drop set for 8 p.m. PST.
The other return game on the calendar belongs to Pavel Dorofeyev, who comes back to Las Vegas on March 13 when the Golden Knights host the New York Rangers at 7 p.m. PST.
In Other News...
Golden Knights Fans May View The Marchessault Split Very Differently
Jonathan Marchessaults exit still hangs over the Golden Knights in a way that goes beyond nostalgia, because the debate around it is really about timing and value as much as it is about a beloved player. Vegas weighed the long-term cap picture against the risk of paying for years that might not look like the early ones, and thats the kind of decision that tends to look different depending on whether youre judging it in the moment or after the fact.
Marchessaults recent production has given both sides of that argument something to point to. His numbers in Nashville were a step down from his peak years, and the comparison to Reilly Smith serves as a reminder of how quickly a veteran wingers output can change once age starts to matter. The unanswered question is how much more offense Marchessault might have delivered had he stayed in Vegas on the deal he wanted, and whether the Knights would have been better off living with the risk. [Read more 🡒]
Kings Prospects Just Got A Meaningful Boost Behind The Bench
The coaching shuffle around the Pacific Divisions AHL and ECHL ranks has picked up again, and it has a familiar veteran at the center of it. Mike Haviland is joining the Ontario Reign as an assistant coach, bringing more than two decades of experience to the Los Angeles Kings affiliate after recent stops with the Columbus Blue Jackets and Cleveland Monsters.
For the Golden Knights side of the developmental map, the changes matter too. Henderson added Alex Loh as an assistant on Joel Wards first-year staff, while Coachella Valley brought in Scott Ford, giving the divisions prospect pipeline another round of fresh voices behind the bench as teams continue to reshuffle their coaching groups. [Read more 🡒]