The Vegas Golden Knights have built one of the NHL’s deepest center groups, with Jack Eichel, William Karlsson, Tomas Hertl and Nic Dowd all giving the roster real punch down the middle. Even so, The Athletic’s latest top-six duo rankings landed Eichel and Karlsson at No. 7, a slot that put them behind two Pacific Division teams: the Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, and the San Jose Sharks’ Macklin Celebrini and Michael Misa.
That placement raised eyebrows quickly. McDavid and Draisaitl have been together for more than 10 years, but they still haven’t delivered a Pacific Division title, much less a Stanley Cup.
Their production has been enormous in the regular season, and much of it has come on the power play, where they remain one of the league’s most dangerous special-teams combinations. But the source of the surprise is simple: the Oilers duo has not finished the job.
Eichel’s case is built on steady, high-end production in Vegas. He has developed into a dependable 90-point player who can chip in 20 or 25 goals without much trouble, and he has a knack for scoring at the biggest moments, with 16 game-winners over the past three seasons. His offensive output is closing in on what he produced across six seasons in Buffalo, and his transformation in Vegas has been dramatic - from a minus-69 player to a plus-88 contributor on a division championship team.
Karlsson has carved out his own important lane with the Golden Knights. He became a 30- and 40-goal scorer in Vegas and remains one of the few Original Misfits still in the lineup who has appeared in all three of the team’s Stanley Cup Finals.
Injuries have interrupted his last two seasons, but his value hasn’t gone away. The source material points to his absence as one of the reasons the Golden Knights lost in the 2026 Final.
The Sharks’ pair of Celebrini and Misa brings a different kind of appeal. The upside is obvious, but the résumé is not there yet.
Celebrini broke through last year with 115 points and finished in the Top 5 in scoring, but San Jose still wasn’t close to a playoff berth. The Sharks may have one of the sport’s future stars, but they are still an emerging team, not one with the kind of team success Eichel and Karlsson have already shared.
Vegas was also ranked behind the Devils’ Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier and the Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews and John Tavares. Those choices came with their own questions. Toronto has won only two playoff series during Matthews’ career, while New Jersey has not done much with Hughes in the lineup, and Hughes has topped 77 points only once, in 2022-23.
The Athletic’s list clearly weighed more than raw scoring. Matthews, for example, still belongs in the elite conversation because he can score 50 to 60 goals by himself, even though the 2025-26 season was the worst offensive year of his career at 53 points after Mitch Marner was no longer on his line.
Still, the reaction around the rankings was predictable. Fans tend to think their own centers belong at the top, and the comments on The Athletic’s social media post reflected that, with many noting that McDavid and Draisaitl, for all their regular-season brilliance, have not been “generational” in the playoffs.
For the Golden Knights, the message is straightforward. A team that has been one of the NHL’s best over the past decade can reasonably feel slighted by seeing Eichel and Karlsson placed behind groups that have not matched Vegas’ success. That kind of ranking can only serve as motivation heading into 2026-27.
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Jack Eichel Is Forcing A Golden Knights Debate Fans Never Expected
Since arriving in November 2021, Jack Eichel has done just about everything the Golden Knights could have hoped for, and then some. He has become one of the franchises defining players, capped by a 94-point season in 2024-25 that set a new team single-season scoring record and reinforced how central he has been to Vegas attack.
He was also the engine of the clubs 2022-23 Stanley Cup run, leading the NHL in playoff points and putting himself in the same conversation as some of the most important names in Golden Knights history. With Jonathan Marchessault, William Karlsson and Mark Stone all part of that broader legacy, Eichels rise has quietly pushed the organization into a debate it probably never expected to have this soon. [Read more 🡒]
Jack Eichel Is Giving Golden Knights Fans A Real Argument Again
Jack Eichel is back in the middle of a familiar kind of conversation for Golden Knights fans, the sort that turns into a barstool debate as soon as rankings and projections start getting tossed around. Harman Dayal of The Athletic slotted Eichel and William Karlsson as Tier 3 centers, a placement that naturally drew some pushback from a fan base that has watched Eichel become one of the most important players in the lineup. Around the same time, Bleacher Report put a little more shine on the picture by projecting Eichel as a candidate to become the first player in franchise history to hit 100 points in a season.
The backdrop makes the discussion even livelier because Eichel is not being measured in a vacuum. San Joses Macklin Celebrini just signed a five-year deal worth an $18.8 million annual average value, a figure that comes in higher than the contracts of both Mitch Marner and Eichel. For Vegas, it is another reminder of how quickly the market around elite talent keeps changing, and why Eichels value can look different depending on whether the argument starts with rsum, role or pure ceiling. [Read more 🡒]
Golden Knights Have Turned Sharks Rivalry Into Pure One Sided History
The Golden Knights meetings with the Sharks have long since stopped looking like a true back-and-forth rivalry. Vegas has turned the regular-season series into a rout, piling up a 31-2-5 record against San Jose and steadily building a gap that has changed the tone of every matchup between the two teams. What once looked like one of the NHLs flashiest new feuds has instead become a reminder of how quickly the balance of power can shift.
The bigger picture only sharpens the contrast. Vegas has already made multiple Stanley Cup Finals trips, while San Jose has reached that stage just once, and the difference in playoff pedigree has only added to the one-sided feel. Whether that makes the rivalry less intense or simply more lopsided is part of the debate now, but for the Golden Knights, the results have done most of the talking. [Read more 🡒]