Vegas Golden Knights ~ Golden Playoff Run? By Jennifer Kate
These blog introductions seem to be getting quite familiar, but if you don’t know who I am, I'm Jennifer. I'm one of the hosts of Slap Shots Fired here on the Empty The Bench Podcast Network.
Today's blog is gonna talk about the Vegas Golden Knights and their Golden Playoff run so far. Now for some of you who don’t know, I love the newer expansion teams that the NHL has brought in recently, and Vegas is just a team that has taken the NHL by storm. The Vegas Golden Knights joined the NHL in 2017, and since then, have gone to the Stanley Cup (in their first season no less).
Unfortunately, they did lose to the Washington Capitals. In 2019, they made it to the first round but once again fell short, losing to the San Jose Sharks.
Now they are currently in the Western Conference Finals. As I am writing this, we are awaiting the outcome of the Dallas and Seattle series, which is about the play Game 7.
Now let's deep dive a bit into the 2022-2023 Vegas Golden Knight roster. One of the first names that come to my mind when talking about the Knights is the one and only Jack Eichel.
He had a pretty ok season; I wouldn't say it was his best, but it was good. My one issue with Eichel is he has been hurt a lot recently. But I don't wanna go on too much of a tangent; let’s look at Eichel’s numbers for the regular season. He ended the regular season with 27 goals and 39 assists, and he was a +26.
Now let’s move on to talk about another great player for Vegas -- Jonathan Marchessault. If you guys saw Game 6 between the Oilers and Golden Knights, Marchessault stole the show, scoring a natural hat trick to help lead Vegas back to the Western Conference Finals.
Marchessault ended the regular season with 28 goals and 29 assists and was a +2.
A final player I really wanna touch on is a player I think is extremely underrated -- Mark Stone, who is the current captain of the Vegas Golden Knights. I never really saw Stone much until this season, where I feel like he has a fantastic. With that being said, Stone ended the regular season with 17 goals and 21 assists and was a +11.
Now for just a few honorable mention names, and I promise I won’t bore you with more numbers, but I just want to share a few big-time names on the Vegas Golden Knights roster: Phil Kessel, Alex Pietrangelo, William Karlsson, and, of course, none other than future Hall of Famer Jonathan Quick.
Now to close out this blog, I must talk a little bit about the current "golden" playoff run that the Knights are on. The Golden Knights ended the regular season with a total of 51 wins and 22 loses and 9 overtime losses, for a total of 111 points on the season. They came in first place in the Pacific Division.
In the first round of the playoffs, the Golden Knights beat the Winnipeg Jets in five games. Then in round two, they beat Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers in six games.
Now I think this is a good place to end this blog, and all I have to say is I hope we have a Western Conference Finals between the two expansion teams.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this little bit of a longer read and enjoy the rest of the playoffs. I'm sure I'll be back with even more hockey content soon.