(Photo Credit: SinBin.vegas photographer Brandon Andreasen)

Our favorite format for making predictions is back. It’s time for some surprising opinions on the 2024-2025 Golden Knights. We’ll get Jason’s (and yours from our Discord channel) later this week.

Call me crazy, but Mark Stone will set a career-high in goals, trailing only Jack Eichel for the team lead

Since becoming a Golden Knight, Stone has been one of the team’s main offensive driving forces. However, he never scored more than 21 goals in a season with the Golden Knights. His career high came the year he was traded to Vegas when he scored 28 in Ottawa before scoring another five at VGK for a total of 33. With the squad being quite devoid of goal-scoring wingers, I expect Stone to carry the bulk of the players. loads and flies past the 30. Regardless of how the lineup shakes out throughout the season, Stone will play with a great center and the line is expected to produce plenty of offense. Finally, I think this is the year that Stone stays healthy and plays close to 80 games. I was going to go a step further and say he will lead the team, but I think Eichel will reach 50, and Stone won’t.

Call me crazy, but the Golden Knights will have the worst Corsi, Fenwick and shot share of any team to make the playoffs and all three will be the worst in franchise history

Last year’s team almost achieved this feat in Corsi and Fenwick (Boston was worse in both), but they actually finished the season with more shots on goal than they allowed (BOS, TBL and VAN all made the playoffs and none ) . This year, VGK will cede more ball possession than ever before in team history. Not only do I think they will allow more shot attempts than they create, I also think the delta will be significant. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Golden Knights allow 600 more shot attempts than they take. On certain nights it will be too much to overcome, but on most nights the scores will be close. VGK will win their fair share of matches, even if they lose the Corsi battle by a wide margin. A strong defensive corps and a good goalkeeper will keep them afloat in most matches, and they will feast on the bad teams to win enough points to clinch a play-off spot. This season may not be pretty, but they will still win more games than they lose.

Call me crazy, but Jonas Rondbjerg will score more goals and points than Alexander Holtz

Holtz enters the season as one of the most exciting young offensive players the Golden Knights have ever had. The former #7 overall pick has shown he can score in the NHL, but has yet to prove he can earn the trust of an NHL coach. On the other hand, Jonas Rondbjerg is almost the exact opposite. I expect Holtz to run into all kinds of issues with Bruce Cassidy, which will limit his time on the ice when he is in the lineup and likely limit his appearances. Rondbjerg might not even get the starting job out of camp, but the fact that he has to clear waivers should give him some extra wiggle room to stay on the 23-man roster. I don’t expect this to be a high-scoring race, so give me the guy every coach loves instead of the one who consistently finds his way into the doghouse.

Call me crazy, but VGK’s combined power play and penalty kill percentages will be greater than 106% and will be in the Top 5 in the league

The Golden Knights have only finished with a combined special teams percentage above 100% twice in seven seasons. In their first year they were solid with a combined grade of 102.4. In the 56-game 2020-2021 season, they had one of the most dominant PKs ever: 86.8, boosting their poor power play to a total of 104.6. This year the Golden Knights are going to be true special teams merchants and it will be a big reason why they are successful in the standings. There are numerous penalty kill options and the team will be as involved in the killing as ever as most of their games will be lower scoring. The power play has a good chance to be the best in team history, surpassing the 2019-20 team’s 22.0%. Hertl, Hanifin, Olofsson, Holtz and Dorofeyev are all great weapons on the power play and a healthier Steen will help immensely as well. Believe me, I know how scary it sounds for VGK fans to have to rely on special teams to be the team’s calling card, but the composition of the roster suggests this more than ever this year.