Jack Eichel’s last season with the Vegas Golden Knights still landed him in elite company, but the numbers weren’t as clean as they had been before. He finished with exactly 90 points, putting up 27 goals and 63 assists, and that was enough to keep his place among the league’s top producers. Still, the stat line carried some warning signs.
The drop showed up in more places than just the box score. His goals dipped by one and his assists fell by three, but the underlying numbers pointed to a sharper slide.
Eichel’s high danger xGoals fell by nearly two points, and his shooting percentage dropped by nearly two percentage points as well. He also managed only one power play goal, a frustrating number for a player of his caliber.
That dry spell in goal scoring didn’t stop at the regular season, either. It carried into the Stanley Cup playoffs and, as the source article puts it, cost the Golden Knights a Stanley Cup.
Even with that backdrop, the projection for 2026-27 is a big swing back in the other direction. The expectation is that Eichel becomes the first 100-point player in Golden Knights history, and the forecast here is even bolder: 33 goals and 70 assists. That would give him 103 points.
There’s a case built into the prediction, too. Eichel led Vegas with 260 shots on goal last season, and with Dorofeyev gone, the path opens even wider for him to keep firing. His career-high in goals with the Golden Knights is 31, set in 2023-24, but the projection calls for him to push past that and break through in a major way.
In Other News...
Golden Knights Face A Familiar Prospect Question Entering Year 10
As the Golden Knights head toward their 10th season, the organization is once again using September to take stock of its younger players, with Rookie Camp and the Rookie Faceoff tournament on the calendar. It is the same annual checkpoint that gives Vegas a look at the next wave, but it also reinforces how much attention the club still draws whenever the conversation turns to development and the pipeline behind the NHL roster.
Brendan Brisson is part of that broader picture, too, even if his path has moved well beyond the Golden Knights after being traded to the Rangers and later landing a one-year deal with the Maple Leafs. Against that backdrop, The Athletics recent criticism of Vegas prospect system has only sharpened the focus on the farm depth question, and it is the kind of issue that lingers around a contender built more on present-tense success than on a long list of blue-chip prospects. [Read more 🡒]