2. How will Vegas replace Dorofeyev’s production?<\/p>\n
Forward Pavel Dorofeyev<\/a> led Vegas in goals in each of the past two seasons, scoring 35 in 2024-25 and 37 in 2025-26. He also scored 12 goals in the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season, second on the team behind forward Brett Howden<\/a>\u00a0(14).<\/p>\n It was time for the restricted free agent to cash in, so the Golden Knights traded him to the New York Rangers on June 26 for two first-round picks and a third-round pick. The 25-year-old later signed a seven-year, $77 million contract with New York.<\/p>\n Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon recalled how forward Jonathan Marchessault<\/a>\u00a0signed a five-year, $27.5 million contract with the Nashville Predators after helping Vegas win the Stanley Cup in 2023 and earning the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.<\/p>\n “You wondered how you would ever replace a guy like that, and it provided the opportunity for ‘Pav,'” McCrimmon said. “That’s how Pavel got his opportunity.”<\/p>\n Forwards William Karlsson<\/a> (68) and Mark Stone<\/a> (22) each missed a significant number of games last season. If they stay healthy, that will help offset some of the loss. Vegas also signed forward Victor Olofsson<\/a>, who scored an NHL career-high 28 goals for the Buffalo Sabres in 2022-23.<\/p>\n But who else can help replace Dorofeyev’s production? Can Howden, who has never scored more than 23 goals in a regular season, take another step after his playoff performance?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2. How will Vegas replace Dorofeyev’s production? Forward Pavel Dorofeyev led Vegas in goals in each of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-876685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}