The Vegas Golden Knights made arguably the biggest headline of the offseason acquiring star forward Mitch Marner. Now, it's time to figure out how to arrange the top six in order to put the strongest lineup on the ice for opening night.
Head coach Bruce Cassidy has quite the task in front of him with a seemingly endless number of line combinations that could reasonably play together. Over the course of an 82-game season, it's likely that most of those possibilities come to fruition for some length of time.
But there are two main strategies for figuring out how to optimize the offensive weapons in the lineup, and there is an argument to be made in favor of each of those possibilities.
Option 1: Frontload the Golden Knights top line
It's extremely enticing to envision a Vegas lineup where two of the league's most elite skaters in Jack Eichel and Mitch Marner are paired up on the top line. It's what everyone has been waiting to see since the sign-and-trade with the Toronto Maple Leafs was executed in June. They are both evasive skaters who can analyze plays on the fly and effortlessly create chances for themselves and their linemates, finding gaps in coverage to convert on scoring opportunities.
This does immediately raise some concerns -- as GM Kelly McCrimmon said, if two playmakers like Eichel and Marner are being matched up, "Somebody's going to have to shoot, right?"
The simplest solution to that is putting Pavel Dorofeyev on the left wing. The 24-year-old forward led the team with a career-high 35 goals last season, totalling 52 points in 82 games. He employs a shoot-first mentality that resulted in him headlining the Knights with 254 shots on goal -- 19 more than the second-place Eichel in four fewer minutes of time on ice per game. Dorofeyev is the team's best option for a sniper, and would seamlessly fit in as the finisher on a line with such effective puck distributors like Eichel and Marner.
That would make Ivan Barbashev, Tomas Hertl, and Mark Stone the most likely option for the second line, which would leave Vegas with quite a strong top six. Barbashev and Stone in particular played extremely well on a line together with Eichel last year, producing 27 goals together -- more than any other line on the team according to Natural Stat Trick.
Hertl, meanwhile, had a strong showing as well with
Option 2: Spread the wealth and run Marner on the second line
Given how effective the Barbashev - Eichel - Stone combo was last season, it could make just as much sense to keep that trio intact at the top of the lineup and shift Marner down to the second line. There, he could play with Dorofeyev and Hertl.
The duo of Dorofeyev and Hertl was very effective at 5-on-5 during the regular season. They outmatched the opponents in every single offensive category when they were on the ice together -- shot attempts, shots on goal, goals scored, scoring chances -- you name it, they dominated it. Most impressively, the pair had a Corsi for of 54.5% and 77 SOG more than their opponents, showing how they absolutely controlled the pace of the game alongside one another.
Keeping those two together would be a very reasonable decision, and adding in an X-factor like Marner could result in this becoming a 1A-1B situation as opposed to a first and second line. That's never a bad idea when it comes to balancing out the talent within the lineup instead of employing one extremely strong line and another that's more of a medium-level threat.
Cassidy can't really go wrong in either of these scenarios: either he gets one of the deadliest top lines in the NHL, or has a powerful one-two punch of trios to round out the top of the roster. Both will probably be tested out at various points of the season. It's just a matter of who finds the most chemistry together. One thing is for certain, though: Marner and Eichel would be one of the most entertaining, fast-moving and hard-to-beat pairings in the NHL.
"[Eichel is] obviously an exceptional player, a guy that really moves well up and down the ice, both ends of the ice very responsible. At the same time, he's got a deadly shot with his vision and playmaking style as well. I'm very excited to start working with him and try to figure out the chemistry quickly and get that rolling."Mitch Marner (via NHL.com)