Dynamic duo: Marner, Eichel look ingrained as Golden Knights’ go-to pair for years to come

Vegas Golden Knights forward Mitch Marner (93) speaks during a press conference at City National Arena, Tuesday, July 1, 2025. The team has acquired forward Mitch Marner from the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for forward Nicolas Roy. Photo by: Wade Vandervort

Two days before news of the trade sending Toronto Maple Leafs winger Mitch Marner to the Vegas Golden Knights became official and public, word began to spread around the team.

Before Marner was fully aware anyone outside of his inner circle and the Golden Knights’ front office knew about the impending move, he received text messages from two of his teammates-to-be. One of them was from a fellow multi-time NHL All-Star, center Jack Eichel.

“I’m very excited to start working with him and try to figure out the chemistry quickly and get that rolling,” Marner said of Eichel. “I’ve talked to a couple guys that have been his teammate before, and they’ve just said unbelievable things about him.”

The Golden Knights have to hope the pair of 28-year-olds taken within two picks of each other at the top of the 2015 NHL Draft—Eichel went second overall and Marner fourth—can discover that level of camaraderie. 

The future of the organization now depends on it.

Eichel and Marner are all but entrenched as the faces of the franchise for nearly the next decade.

Marner arrived to Vegas via sign-and-trade agreement with Toronto on an extension that runs through the 2032-2033 season for a total of $96 million. Eichel, still currently under contract for next season, will almost surely get his own maximum eight-year deal in the coming months that will run through the 2033-2034 campaign for an equal or larger amount.

Together, the two players will take up more than a quarter of the Knights’ salary-cap space allotted for the whole team.

That means they must produce at an elite level. The good news is, they’ve done nothing in their careers so far to suggest they won’t, and if anything,could conceivably get better playing next to each other as they get deeper into their primes.

Marner finished fifth in the NHL last season with 102 points (27 goals, 75 assists). Eichel was eighth with a Vegas franchise record 94 points (28 points, 66 assists) despite missing a handful of games to injury down the stretch.

Players like current captain Mark Stone—the only non-Eichel Knight to ever finish in the top 10 of Hart Trophy (Most Valuable Player) voting—and former standout Jonathan Marchessault—the team’s all-time leading goal scorer—have helped give Vegas some starpower skaters over the years.

But it’s never gone into a season with a pair near as explosive as Eichel and Marner like it will when the 2025-2026 schedule begins in October.

“I don’t know that they’ll play together (on the same line),” Vegas general manager Kelly McCrimmon said. “Those are going to be decisions that (coach) Bruce (Cassidy) makes.”

Cassidy may mix and match like every coach, but it’s hard to imagine Marner and Eichel won’t spend significant time on Vegas’ top forward line.

Even if he does decide to split them up, Marner and Eichel will log minutes together on the power play and penalty kill.

There are concerns that come with placing so much emphasis on two players, namely that they’re both among the best passers in the league but have therefore been too willing to defer to teammates with games on the line. Neither Eichel nor Marner have shown the killer instinct to consistently keep pucks for themselves and throw them on net when their teams need goals the most.

“Somebody’s going to have to shoot,” McCrimmon jokingly acknowledged when asked about the pair’s stylistic fit. 

The slot next alongside Marner and Eichel on the hypothetical Golden Knights’ top forward line might now be one of the most advantageous roles in the NHL. Ivan Barbashev is the likeliest candidate to fill it, though the Golden Knights could conceivably also give Pavel Dorofeyev—who scored a team-high 35 goals last year—a look there.

But Dorofeyev has matched well with Stone, who will presumably continue to anchor the second line. The 33-year-old Stone remains a pillar of the franchise and one of the better players in the NHL, but he’s struggled with injuries and has started to show some decline that will almost surely accelerate in the remaining two years on his contract.

The Golden Knights needed another do-it-all force next to Eichel to compete at the highest reaches of the Western Conference, and they couldn’t have done any better than Marner—the NHL’s consensus top available player this offseason.

The presence of Marner and Eichel places them among the favorites to reach the Stanley Cup for years to come. Whether the Golden Knights actually get there will come down to whether the duo can figure out how to maximize their partnership.

“It gives us another No. 1 star at the forward position, which we feel is really important,” McCrimmon said. “I think it improves our team tremendously.”

This story originally appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.