The Vegas Golden Knights’ torrid 9-0-1 start out of the gate has been predicated on scoring balance, defense, and some exceptional goaltending, but that doesn’t mean that individual offensive performances don’t deserve to be highlighted.
Seeing names like Jack Eichel and Chandler Stephenson atop the Golden Knights’ points leaders isn’t surprising, but a team exceeding early expectations demands contributions from unexpected sources. Neither William Karlsson nor Shea Theodore can necessarily be considered unexpected sources, but their top-tier production wasn’t entirely anticipated ahead of the season and has been tantamount to the team’s success.
With Vegas surging out to an NHL-best first 10 games, it seems like a good time to give some credit to Karlsson and Theodore, a pair of rather unheralded Originals who have been instrumental in the team’s early success.
William Karlsson
After making a splash in the club’s expansion season with a 43-goal campaign that was just as unlikely as the Golden Knights’ trip to the Stanley Cup Final, Karlsson has settled into a middle-six role in the years since. Quietly, though, he enjoyed an excellent 2022-23, recording 14 goals and 53 points in the regular season before scoring 11 goals and adding six assists in 22 postseason games.
That playoff form has carried over for “Wild Bill” thus far in 2023-24. The 30-year-old Swede boasts a team-leading 11 points, scoring three goals and delivering eight assists through 10 games. But more impressive than the numbers, themselves, has been his productivity relative to his place in the lineup.
As the team’s third-line center, Karlsson has been tasked with playing alongside a rotating cast of wingers, a far cry from his days of centering the Misfit line between Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith. Those eight assists have led to goals for six different linemates, including guys like Kaedan Korczak, Brayden Pachal, and Pavel Dorofeyev, who haven’t yet become consistent mainstays in the lineup.
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Credit should be shared when it comes to touting the Golden Knights’ balanced attack. But Karlsson has held a disproportionately large role thus far in helping spark some of the team’s forward depth and keeping things level across the lineup. Strangely, he’s too valuable at this point to move up into a top-six role.
Shea Theodore
Theodore has stood as a model of consistency throughout his Vegas tenure, recording between 37 and 52 points in each of his previous five seasons (from ‘‘Confidence is huge’ — How Shea Theodore’s surge is fueling the Golden Knights’ playoff push,’ The Athletic, 04/15/22). The funny thing about that consistent production, though, is that it has been achieved despite circumstances that have contributed to a wildly varied number of games played each year. In three of those seasons, the blueliner played in more than 70 games and averaged just under 0.6 points per game. In the other two, he tallied a combined 83 points in just 108 total games (nearly .77 PPG).
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Could this be the year that Theodore puts it all together from the back end? If the 28-year-old can remain healthy, maintaining his current scoring pace would keep him in the upper echelon of defensive point-getters. As it stands now, his 10 points in 10 games is tied for third among defensemen, equal to Detroit’s Moritz Seider and just behind Vancouver’s Quinn Hughes and New York Rangers star Adam Fox.
It’s only been 10 games, and it’s impossible to know whether Theodore can maintain this pace, let alone avoid injury. If he can stay on the ice, however, his presence in driving the power play (he has five points with the man advantage) and his freedom to join the rush thanks to steady defensive partner Brayden McNabb should help maximize his considerable offensive potential.
The Golden Knights are in the enviable position of comfortably rolling four lines and not knowing where offense may come from on a given night. In Tuesday’s 3-2 shootout victory over the Montreal Canadiens, William Carrier and Paul Cotter provided the scoring before Marchessault and Theodore helped secure the extra point in the shootout. But while just about everyone on the roster seems to be clicking at the moment, a couple of Vegas originals find themselves leading the way.