The Vegas Golden Knights are eyeing a second Stanley Cup championship in three seasons in 2024-25. After making a cinderella run to the Finals in their inaugural campaign back in 2017-18 — and eventually losing to Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals in five games — the Knights got over the hump two years ago, dominating the Western Conference before easily dispatching the Florida Panthers in the 2023 Stanley Cup Final.
Although Vegas was again considered a prime contender last year, and despite going up 2-0 on the Dallas Stars, the Knights were beaten by their cross-divisional rivals in a thrilling seven-game, Round 1 series.
They’ve had some struggles this season, and again had to deal with a plethora of injuries, but the 2024-25 iteration of the Golden Knights is again looking potent. Currently 45-22-8 through 75 games and leading the Pacific Division with seven tilts left in the regular-season, Bruce Cassidy’s club looks well-positioned to potentially make another deep run this spring.
And although the roster has one consistently fatal flaw, let’s first discuss the reasons Vegas is one of the best teams in the West this year.
Knights are excellent at 5-on-5 and have a potent powerplay
The No. 1 thing the Golden Knights have going for them is Jack Eichel. He has always been a superstar — even while a member of the Buffalo Sabres — but the 28-year-old is having the best season of his career in 2024-25. Eichel’s career-high is 82 points in 77 games, which he set while still playing in Western New York back in 2018-19.
But in 2024-25, he’s gone nuclear. Through 74 games, he’s already blown his career-bests out of the water, managing 93 points in that span along with an excellent plus-32 rating. He won’t win the Hart Trophy, but he deserves to be strongly considered for the effort he’s put together this year.
Led by Eichel, the Knights boast the league’s best powerplay, scoring at a ridiculous 30.4 percent clip. Scoring nearly one in every three PP’s is one of the key reasons why Vegas has returned to the top of the Western Conference this year.
Pavel Dorofeyev has come out of nowhere to be a big reason why, scoring a team-high 32 goals — along with 49 points — in 75 games. Tomas Hertl is currently injured, but had been playing some of the best hockey of his career beforehand; he has amassed 31 goals and 59 points in 70 games, while Mark Stone continues to produce, to the tune of 66 points in just 61 games.
The blue line is also one of the league’s best. The Knights allow less goals per game than all but six teams at an impressive 2.65 goals against/game. With Shea Theodore and Alex Pietrangelo back to full health, along with a strong season from Noah Hanifin, the defensive unit remains one of the premier ones in the league.
And, of course, they have the same goaltender who led them to a 2023 Stanley Cup championship in Adin Hill.
Adin Hill has done this before
Although he’s been up-and-down this season, Hill has really turned his game around as of late. Overall in 2024-25, the 28-year-old has won 29 of his 47 starts, while managing a very solid 2.50 goals-against average and .907 save percentage along with four shutouts.
With Ilya Samsonov currently day-to-day — and even if he was at full health — Hill should be between the pipes for the Golden Knights’ entire playoff run. He was exceptional two postseasons ago, managing a 2.17 GAA and .932 SV% over 16 starts en route to his first National Hockey League championship.
In 2024-25, the Knights are again the cream of the crop in the West. They are led by a true superstar in Eichel, have one of the league’s best defensive units, and can confidently turn to a goaltender between the pipes who knows what it takes to win in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
But all of that could be undone by the one single area that has held the team back all year long — an abysmal penalty kill.
Golden Knights’ fatal flaw is a concerningly bad penalty kill
No team wins the Stanley Cup without above-average special teams. Being able to score on the powerplay is absolutely crucial — and the Knights haven’t had any trouble doing that this year. A first unit of Eichel, Dorofeyev, Stone, Hertl (when he’s healthy, William Karlsson when he isn’t) and Theodore is ferocious. And there’s no reason to think that group won’t be able to score in the postseason.
But, for some reason, Vegas has struggled mightily to keep the puck out of its net throughout the campaign. As of Friday, the Golden Knights have the 26th worst penalty kill in the league, managing to kill off only 75.16 percent of penalties they take. The only teams with a worse penalty killing clip are the San Jose Sharks, Anaheim Ducks, St. Louis Blues, New York Islanders, Minnesota Wild and Detroit Red Wings.
On the bright side, the Knights have taken only 426 penalty minutes over the 75-game season. That’s just a single one more than the Islanders, who have taken 425. After those two clubs, the next-lowest is the Edmonton Oilers with 501. Cassidy’s group has just done a great job staying out of the penalty box.
That doesn’t change the fact that, when they are down a man, the Golden Knights struggle mightily. If that number doesn’t improve in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Vegas is going to have a very tough time winning four rounds like they did a couple of years ago.
With a fully healthy defensive unit, which hasn’t been the case for most of the year, that penalty killing number should improve over the final seven games of the regular-season. But it still remains a concern.
Luckily for Vegas, the most likely scenario in Round 1 is a date with either the red-hot Blues (who have won a franchise record 11 games), or Wild, two teams whose powerplay numbers are in the bottom half of the NHL — and two clubs that are even worse than Vegas at killing penalties.
Still, the poor penalty kill will likely be a key area of focus over the last couple of weeks of the campaign for Cassidy and his squad. It’ll be interesting to see if the Knights can overcome this fatal flaw and bring a second championship in three years to the strip come June.
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