Jack Eichel’s Return and the Golden Knights Toughest Challenge

Jack Eichel in Vegas Golden Knights gear. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Jack Eichel in Vegas Golden Knights gear. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

The Vegas Golden Knights are currently in first place in the Pacific but hanging on by a thread. They will look to continue to lead the Pacific by getting the win tonight against the Avalanche.

The Vegas Golden Knights are coming off a bad loss to the Calgary Flames and will be looking to bounce back against the Colorado Avalanche. However, this is going to be just as difficult as the Flames game, so they shouldn’t be walking into this game thinking it’s an easy win.

After a rough outing by goalie, Robin Lehner, the Knights later confirmed that he was actually battling an injury. Now he is currently listed as day-to-day which doesn’t bode well ahead of the game.

Furthermore, the Vegas Golden Knights captain, Mark Stone was just placed onto the LTIR. After it was released that he had been battling a back injury since the start of the season that’s caused him to miss multiple games, there was only one move- to add him to the LTIR. But this is where things get good.

After adding Mark Stone to the LTIR, Pete DeBoer and Kelly McCrimmon announced that Jack Eichel was going to make his Vegas Golden Knights debut tonight against the Colorado Avalanche. Which, should be a good test for him.

The Colorado Avalanche are undoubtedly one of the best teams in the league, and seeing how he matches up against them will be a good test to see if he was healthy. If not, we’ll know, if he is, then this should be a good game.

So, now that we got some of the injury updates out of the way, let’s take a look at the potential lineups for tonight.

Colorado Avalanche vs Vegas Golden Knights Lineups

Offense

Max Pacioretty-Jack Eichel-Evgenii Dadonov

Mattias Janmark-William Karlsson-Reilly Smith

Jonathan Marchessault-Chandler Stephenson-Nicolas Roy

William Carrier-Brett Howden-Nolan Patrick

Defense

Nicolas Hague-Alex Pietrangelo

Brayden McNabb-Shea Theodore

Ben Hutton-Dylan Coghlan

Goalies

Laurent Brossoit

Logan Thompson

The  Vegas Golden Knights have a couple different lineup options to choose from tonight. With lots of big name players out, including Alec Martinez and Mark Stone, they will have to fill some of those voids which gives them lots of opportunities.

The Vegas Golden Knights are hanging on by a thread in the Pacific division, getting a win tonight against the Avalanche not only shows teams that they can hang with the best, but that they are still a winning organization. Because quite frankly, they’ve been quite inconsistent this year. This would be a big win.