Ten seasons skating in the NHL, and Vegas Golden Knights’ Jack Eichel is still turning heads with his stick work and scoring.
The Golden Knights are on the road for the next 10 days; with stops in the Greater New York City area for games against the Islanders, Rangers, Devils, then off to Philadelphia and Columbus, Ohio, before returning home. Coming into Friday’s game with New Jersey at the Prudential Center in Newark, Eichel and his teammates are riding a modest two-game winning streak. Teamwise, Vegas is on a roll. At 12–6–8, with 32 points, the Golden Knights are but one point behind Pacific Division leader Anaheim Ducks.
For Eichel, as well as his team is doing this season, individually he’s banging on all cylinders. His 11 goals, 21 assists, and 32 points, in the Golden Knights’ first 26 games of the 2025–2026 season is pointing to possibly career highs in all offensive categories. Currently, Vegas’ top center is among the top 15 in NHL scoring this season. He is 11th in assists heading into tonight’s game with the Devils, just five behind league-leader Connor McDavid. Barring any major injury, good times are on the Golden Knights’ hockey horizon this season. Any team with Eichel leading should expect nothing less.
A combination of Eichel skating as among the best the NHL has to offer, plus a front office led by general manager Kelly McCrimmon that remains fluid in making the necessary moves to keep the Golden Knights competitive, a return to the Stanley Cup Final this spring shouldn’t come as a shock to the hockey world. Signing Mitch Marner this past off-season in a trade with the Toronto Maple Leafs, is the acquisition that puts Vegas in the conversation to be this season’s Western Conference champions. With Eichel and Marner on Vegas coach Butch Cassidy’s top line, betting against the 2022-2023 Stanley Cup champs to claim a second title in four years would be foolish.
Right from when Eichel entered the NHL in 2015, the bar was set high for him to be somewhere between the game’s greatest scoring skaters of all-time, from Wayne Gretzky to Mario Lemieux, and Alex Ovechkin. A tall order? For sure. Incredible pressure for a 19-year-old rookie with the Buffalo Sabres at the start of the 2015 NHL season. After just one year of college play at Boston University, resulting in winning the NCAA’s Hobey Baker Award (recognizing the most outstanding player in Division l men’s hockey), Eichel’s stock with NHL scouting staffs skyrocketed. The kid from Massachusetts went No. 2 overall in the draft to the Sabres, behind only McDavid being selected by the Edmonton Oilers.
Now, a decade later, and in his fifth season in Vegas after coming over from the Sabres in a November 2021 trade, Eichel is forcing the bar of high expectations to remain the status quo. Eichel has slipped pucks past the very best goalies the NHL has to offer 250 times. His 640 points collected is a testament that consistency in training has its rewards. Overcoming a neck injury while with the Sabres had Eichel’s career at a crossroad. Moving on to Vegas seemed to pump more oxygen into his game, as he made his debut with his new team in February 2022.
Winning the Stanley Cup in his first postseason experience has kept Eichel hungry for a repeat performance. Vegas hitting the road, with its first stop being in “The Garden State” on Friday, couldn’t have been timed better. The Devils are looking to break out of a three-game slide at home. Before jetting to the New York-New Jersey Metropolitan area for Friday’s game, Vegas came out ahead of the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday. Skating before their hometown fans at T-Mobile Arena, the Golden Knights won 4–3 in a shootout. Defenseman Shea Theodore found the back of the net for the Golden Knights with the winning goal.
Beginning their road trip on a positive note, Vegas is one point ahead of the Los Angeles Kings in the Pacific Division. With Anaheim welcoming the Washington Capitals to their home Honda Center on Friday, a win in New Jersey by Vegas and a Ducks loss, would jump the Golden Knights into the division leader position. Among the Devils’ players sidelined with injuries, with their top center Jack Hughes out for the next couple of weeks with a hand injury, Eichel adding to his individual scoring numbers couldn’t be more inviting on Friday.
The Eichel-led Golden Knights, with 110 points last season, won the Pacific Division in 2024–2025. Vegas, now in their ninth season of NHL play, is a serious contender to be one of the two teams standing to participate in the Stanley Cup Final, come early June. With Eichel leading the charge on offense, what’s not to like about the Golden Knights’ odds at being champions again?
