Jack Eichel extension looms as Golden Knights’ first order of business this offseason

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

A particularly painful Stanley Cup Final for the Vegas Golden Knights to watch wraps up either tonight in Sunrise, Fla., or Friday in Edmonton, Alberta.

The Golden Knights beat both the Panthers and Oilers en route to their own Stanley Cup triumph in 2023 and finished this year’s regular season with a better record than the championship pair, too.

Those are two of the many reasons why everyone in the Vegas organization believes the team remains close to another championship. The focus of the NHL offseason, which begins in earnest July 1 with the start of free agency, for the Golden Knights will be making moves to push them over the top in their next Stanley Cup quest.

They shouldn’t have to search far. 

It’s easy to get swept up in rumors and possibilities this time of year, but Vegas’ primary objective doesn’t require looking beyond its current roster.

Superstar center Jack Eichel is eligible for a contract extension July 1, and the best-case scenario for the Golden Knights would be getting the deal done as quickly as possible.

Eichel is more than capable of being the centerpiece of a championship team. He’s already proven as much.

It’s easy to forget that Eichel was the best player on the 2023 Stanley Cup squad. Yes, Jonathan Marchessault won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs’ most valuable player, goalie Adin Hill turned into Patrick Roy for the postseason and team captain Mark Stone banked a hat trick in the clinching game.

But take away Eichel, and the Golden Knights never reach the final series. He’s arguably the only player on that now-hallowed roster who deserves that distinction.

Eichel led the team in points in both the regular season and playoffs despite being only 26 years old at the time and not quite in his prime.

He’s there now, and with the combination of his natural abilities and work ethic, it’s going to extend longer than the vast majority of his mere-mortal peers.

The Golden Knights’ decision-makers know this. General manager Kelly McCrimmon in his season-ending news conference offered all the right assurances when asked about extending Eichel.

“Certainly that will be an important order of business for us,” he said. “The guy is a tremendous player. He’s one of the top guys in the NHL. He’s got great character, great leadership. You see night in, night out what he does for our team, so that will be a really important piece of business for us. We’d sure hope to keep Jack in our organization.”

There are only two possible, and simple, hold-ups — Keeping Eichel won’t be cheap, and the contract can’t be short.

He shouldn’t require quite the monstrous eight-year, $112 million pact Leon Draisaitl recently signed with the Oilers — the highest annual average value deal in NHL history — but Eichel’s terms should be close.

He’s played himself into that stratum.

Eichel finished fifth in Hart Trophy voting for the league’s MVP this year — three spots behind Draisaitl — with a pair of first-place votes. That’s the best a Golden Knight has ever placed.

McCrimmon and Co. have been heavily value-conscious in the past and scoffed at overpaying players, especially when it comes to the latter parts of contracts.

Remember, it wasn’t money that controversially torpedoed discussions with Marchessault last year — it was the length of the deal.

Eichel will similarly want to be paid more in the final years of his contract than statistical projections will deem appropriate for a player in his mid-to-late 30s. But, unlike the Marchessault situation, this is a case where the Golden Knights must ultimately give in if it’s the only way to get the deal done.

It’s too difficult to get top-five NHL caliber players on the roster to not do everything to keep them.

Leave the Eichel decision lingering into the season, and he could play himself into a bigger payday, especially with the NHL’s salary cap expected to continue rising.

Based on Eichel’s history, that’s exactly what he would probably do.

The early years of his new deal should leave the Golden Knights at a surplus even if he’s earning one of the biggest salaries in the league. Throughout his career, Eichel has shown a keen ability to not only improve, but improve in areas where he’s taken criticism.

He arrived in Vegas via blockbuster trade in 2022 with a marred reputation as a teammate from his first stop in Buffalo. Those cries reeked more of a scorned and pouting Buffalo fan base and organization anyway, but Eichel went out of his way to make sure there were no lingering aftereffects with the Golden Knights.

He immediately endeared himself both in the locker room and the community.

But on the ice, he remained more of an offensive difference-maker than a two-way star for the first year. That changed during the run to the Stanley Cup when it was his defense, of all things, against Draisaitl and Connor McDavid that helped most in getting the Golden Knights past the Oilers in the Western Conference semifinals.

Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy has repeatedly cited the series as the moment when Eichel turned into the “200-foot player” he’s remained throughout the past two seasons.

Now Eichel has something new to address heading into this offseason — his goal-scoring. Despite setting a franchise record with 94 points in the regular season, he failed to score a goal in this year’s five-game series loss to the Oilers and has heard about it endlessly.

“I’m always getting texts and messages,” Eichel said in his season exit news conference. “It seems like everyone has an opinion telling me to shoot more. There’s probably times where they’re right and I could be more selfish and shoot the puck. It’s something that I can go into the offseason and look at and say, ‘How can I score more goals and be better with the opportunities I have and be better that way?’ It’s definitely something I’ll look at and try to improve on.”

Based on Eichel’s history, look out. Count on him next season topping his career high of 38 goals, set with the Sabres in the 2019-2020 season.

A lot of speculation has existed around what players the Golden Knights could bring in to play next to Eichel. There’s still chatter circulating regarding Toronto winger Mitch Marner, and now some whispers of Vegas being a potential suitor if the rumors of Dallas wanting to trade winger Jason Robertson are true.

The latter feels like a better fit for Vegas, though it’s hard to imagine the Golden Knights having the resources to pull it off given how aggressively they’ve traded away their top future assets.

Thinking about other headline acquisitions amounts to falling into a trap and getting carried away with secondary concerns, though.

The Golden Knights need to ensure Eichel is staying put first and foremost. He’s more than strong enough to be the pillar around which to build Vegas’ next Stanley Cup team.

[email protected] / 702-948-2790 / @casekeefer