I shudder to think what the Knights may do with a top-five offense that added Mitch Marner, a perennial 100-point threat with excellent playmaking and defensive ability that you can play in any situation.

It does make a lot of logical sense to play Marner and Jack Eichel, a worthy MVP candidate last season, on separate lines given their ability to drive play themselves. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case, at least early in the season, with the Knights toying with the idea of stacking their top line. It’s not something they’ve ever had the luxury to do; while they’ve gone after some big names, an Eichel-Marner combo would be the best they ever had, and arguably a top-five duo in the league.

That Marner cost them nothing but cap space should push the Knights offense to an even higher level. To date, only one team in the cap era, the 2021-22 Panthers with Jonathan Huberdeau (115 points), Aleksander Barkov (88 points) and Sam Reinhart (82), has ever averaged more than four goals per game. Can the Knights do this? On paper, I think it’s totally possible. THN Yearbook & Fantasy Guide projects Eichel and Marner to combine for 199 points this season.

It won’t cost the Knights a balanced lineup, either, considering Tomas Hertl and William Karlsson are as good as you can get with your No. 2 and 3 centers. Mark Stone is still a fantastic Selke-level winger when healthy, and Pavel Dorofeyev (35 goals in 82 games), Ivan Barbashev (21 even-strength goals) and Brett Howden (22 even-strength goals) can provide scoring from the other lines. The Knights can throw out three scoring lines on a nightly basis no matter how they configure their players.

There are no shortage of quality fantasy options here with Eichel and Marner both worth first-round picks in standard 12- or 14-team leagues, and then having a minimum of three others – Dorofeyev, Hertl, Theodore – worth rostering even in the shallowest of leagues.

Where the Knights will certainly feel a hit, however, is the absence of Alex Pietrangelo due to injury. There’s no replacing a player of his caliber and it puts a lot of emphasis on their current top trio, Shea Theodore, Brayden McNabb and Noah Hanifin, to pick up the slack. Zach Whitecloud joins the top four, but the jury’s still out on a defensemen entering his age-29 season who has never averaged more than 18 minutes per game. Jeremy Lauzon, who will likely anchor their third pairing, is worth noting due to his significant potential for hits, who played himself into banger league relevance after leading the league with 386 hits in 2023-24.

Goaltending is somewhat dicey if only because the Knights have zero depth behind Adin Hill. At one point they had a parade of capable backups, but Akira Schmid played in just five games last season and through four seasons has started just 36 games. Hill is coming off the first season in which he appeared in at least 50 games, and his play held up a lot better than I thought, but there’s little margin for error. At least with Ilya Samsonov last season, he brought plenty of experience and still had stretches where he was very reliable, including a perfect 4-0-0 in December last season with a .948 SP and 1.25 GAA.

Prediction:

Even with some question marks regarding their depth on defense and in net, the Knights win their third division banner in four seasons with an outstanding offense. Even with a new team, Marner acclimates himself well with the Knights in the Western Conference, where he can live with relative anonymity compared to being the hometown franchise savior in Toronto.

A looming free agency for Eichel has very little cause for concern given how well he’s fit on the Knights. With plenty of deals expiring this season and the next – Karlsson, Stone, Reilly Smith, Brandon Saad, Jeremy Lauzon among them – the Knights have the cap space and plenty of proof they can be a contender for season to come, making it easy to convince Eichel to stay.

As the Central Division teams beat each other into oblivion with the divisional playoff format, the Knights will have a clear path to the conference final and beyond. Their main rival remains the Oilers, who don’t offer as much depth as the Knights and have even bigger questions in goal.

All stats courtesy of naturalstattrick.com, moneypuck.com, hockeyviz.com, allthreezones.com, hockey-reference.com, eliteprospects.com unless otherwise noted.