Is roster construction to blame for Golden Knights’ struggles?
The Vegas Golden Knights are in the thick of the race for the Stanley Cup Playoffs in the underwhelming Pacific Division, but will make the run to the end of the 2025-26 season with John Tortorella behind the bench, after parting ways with Bruce Cassidy.
On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, co-hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton were joined by Ken Boehlke of SinBin Vegas to break down the Golden Knights, focusing on their roster construction.
Carter Hutton: I think this situation is so interesting because it’s the room or the coach. Does this just come down to more roster construction, or is it just the lull of what’s going on in the Pacific Division, or do you see some glaring problems with the way this team is built?
Ken Boehlke: I think it’s mostly roster construction and kind of how it is built. The names are all very good. They’re obviously better than a lot of teams in the NHL just based solely on the names, but when you really break it down, look at the defense, they’re all very similar. The best three players are very similar: Rasmus Andersson, Shea Theodore and Noah Hanifin. They’re all very good offensively and very good puck movers, but they all had a little bit of some issues in their own end, and all have not really thrived as a top defenseman in any of the teams they’ve been in.
On the offense, Mark Stone, Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner, they’re all guys that like to pass the puck, that like to set up the next play, that like to generate something that looks really pretty and turns into great-looking goals that can work until teams start taking that away. Now you need the guy to shoot, and they only really have one guy on the roster that’s willing to shoot, and that’s Pavel Dorofeyev. He’s leading the team in goals and is having a heck of a season. Outside of that, they’re struggling to score. He also doesn’t score as much at five-on-five. Not many of them score at five-on-five as much
Tomáš Hertl is another one. There’s basically been no offense at five-on-five since the Olympics, and he didn’t generate any at the Olympics either. So the names look good, the team looks good, but the collection of players just isn’t a great fit.
You can catch Tuesday’s full episode, as well as the entire Vegas Golden Knights section here…