Stock Up/Stock Down: 2024-25 Regular Season

Despite the postseason disappointment, the Golden Knights’ regular season can only be defined as a success by any metric. They won 50 games for the third time, posted 110 points or more for the second time, and won the Pacific Division for the fourth time in just eight seasons.

How did they do it? With a lot of players performing significantly better than expected before the season began. However, that’s not to say there weren’t some others who underperformed expectations as well.

Stock Up

Brayden McNabb
Typically, plus/minus is not a stat to hang your hat on. But, sometimes the number is so strong it tells as compelling a story as stats like goals or assists. McNabb posted the second-best rating in VGK history, finishing the year as a +42 in 82 games. He was at least a +2 in an unbelievable 22 games (more than a quarter) and at least +1 in 39 this season. He posted a minus in just 1,7 which Vegas went on to win just five.

McNabb was a calming force both at 5-on-5 and on the penalty kill all season and allowed Cassidy to move Theodore, Hanifin, and Pietrangelo around the lineup freely, knowing he always had a shutdown pair available. He averaged more than 20 minutes per game, didn’t miss a single game all season, and posted his best point shares number in his 13-year NHL career. A 34-year-old rarely pulls out the best season of his life, but McNabb did it.

Brett Howden
Not only did Howden eclipse the double-digit goal plateau for the first time in his career, he scored more than 20 for the first time ever in 24-25. Howden’s offense game popped early in the season and continued right down to the end of the year. Even more impressive, not a single one of Howden’s goals was scored on VGK’s historically excellent power play.

Also, Howden took a massive step forward in terms of responsibility and versatility. Just about every time Bruce Cassidy needed a forward to move up in the lineup it was Howden. He played as a center and a winger in both the top and bottom six at different points of the year, he was a trusted penalty killer, and he was consistently an option late in games against the empty net. His +17 rating was a long way from the -11 he posted last year with the Golden Knights and his 14:52 per game was the most he’s played since his rookie season in New York.

Pavel Dorofeyev
The big question entering the season was who would step forward to score the goals lost by Jonathan Marchessault, Chandler Stephenson, William Carrier, and Michael Amadio who left in free agency. For once, it was a VGK draft pick that filled the void. The former 3rd round pick in 2019 scored an incredible 35 goals, becoming just the third player to do it in Vegas history.

What made Dorofeyev’s rise so crucial for the Golden Knights was his impact on the power play. Vegas has struggled for years getting the power play to be a serious weapon other teams had to worry about, and with Marchessault walking out the door it left a massive hole in the shooter spot opposite Eichel. Dorofeyev filled that role to the tune of 13 power play goals. He played top-six minutes just about the entire season and found decent chemistry with Tomas Hertl, another checklist item VGK were looking to solve this season.

Stock Down

Noah Hanifin
Never in his career had Hanifin reached 50 points in a full season, and most believed there was not a better chance to do it than this year in Vegas. After his excellent cameo late last season and in the 2024 playoffs, Hanifin seemed like a sure bet to take a step forward as a Golden Knight. Instead, he fell back into the same offensive pace he’s always followed and his defensive game left Cassidy and the Golden Knights wanting more quite often.

At one point early in the season, Hanifin had been on the ice for 28 goals against in 24 games and during a six game span was out there for 12 of the 16 goals the Golden Knights allowed. He led the league for a short period in on-ice goals against massively outpacing even his defense partner, Alex Pietrangelo. Ultimately, his defensive struggles forced Cassidy to move him down the lineup and use Nic Hague in a more elevated role. This cropped back up late in the season and it never allowed Vegas to achieve the defensive balance they envisioned with what they called “the deepest defense corps in the NHL.”

Alexander Holtz

When the Golden Knights traded Paul Cotter for Alex Holtz and Akira Schmid many believed Holtz would be the next Vegas reclamation project. He had lost the trust of both coaches in New Jersey and the hope was with a fresh start under Cassidy he could find the offensive game that led him to a 16 goal season a year ago while improving defensively. Instead, he never found his footing with the Golden Knights, struggling to score goals in all of his 53 appearances and continuing to make poor decisions that haunted the coaching staff.

Holtz was expected to be an offensive contributor who would lessen some of the concerns on the wings for the Golden Knights, but instead he further amplified him. He lost his starting role to players like Tanner Pearson, Cole Schwindt and eventually Brandon Saad and Reilly Smith before being sent to the AHL for a good portion of the latter half of the season. What could have been a major win in finding a former first round pick that thrived with a change of scenery, instead Holtz went down as a bust that makes people wonder why Cotter needed to be shipped out at all.

Ilya Samsonov
Samsonov’s numbers in the Golden Knights’ goal weren’t terrible. He posted a 16-9-4 record while allowing 2.82 per game and a .891 save percentage. That’s not exactly Vezina quality goaltending, but it’s plenty good enough for a backup on a good team. Samsonov’s problem though was that he lost the trust of the head coach and goalie coach and eventually couldn’t even be used as the backup in the playoffs.

Samsonov fought through a couple of injuries, including one early in the year and another late in the season. Both of those injuries forced the Golden Knights to use Adin Hill a lot more than they envisioned. Both times, when Samsonov returned, his play suffered. The first time he allowed 16 goals in the first four games and the second time he came back for just one game and gave up four on 28 shots against Calgary. The bar was not set high for Samsonov in his arrival to Vegas, but it was at least high enough to believe he wouldn’t lose his backup job to a goalie with a 3.58 GAA and .886 save percentage in the AHL, but that’s exactly what happened.