LAS VEGAS -- The biggest offseason prize will make his debut Thursday night.
Mitch Marner said he is excited to skate with his new teammates, while soaking up the electric atmosphere inside T-Mobile Arena, as he makes his first appearance as a member of the Golden Knights.
Vegas, which lost its first two preseason games, hosts the Utah Mammoth, who have lost their first three preseason games.
"I saw last game, there was a lot of fans in the crowd, so I mean that excites you always," Marner said after morning skate. "Just try to get things rolling with Jack (Eichel) and Barbs (Ivan Barbashev). Try to just get out there, get our feet under us and make plays that we're comfortable doing."
The combination of Eichel and Marner has been the talk during training camp, as the two most elite forwards in the league now combine, with Barbashev, to form one of the most potent lines in hockey.
For Marner, he said, it's about shaking off the offseason rust and building chemistry with his new teammates.
"That's part of these preseason games," Marner said. "Get your feet under as quick as you can, get your breath or your lungs back as quick as you can, in a way. I feel like you can train as hard as you want throughout the summer, but once you really get in the game, it's hard to kind of match that intensity and the skating and the work ethic and everything like that.
"So try to get that under you as quickly as you can as well. And then just from that point on, try to make plays. Try to do our thing, try to be responsible in our own zone, through the neutral zone. And once again, the O zone, kind of just let our skill take over and try to do our thing."
Coach Bruce Cassidy said while he expects his top guys to be like everyone else, and come out looking to get their timing down, he also admitted during an exclusive interview with The Hockey News that he's not sure how long it'll take for Eichel and Marner to mesh no matter how elite they may be.
"It might take 15 games, I don't know," Cassidy said. "Training camp is not going to sort all of that out, that's step one. That's just part of it. And they're still good players. And just because chemistry may or may not come, they can still be very effective for their team, but we want to have the best versions of themselves.
It might take a while. So training camp is the first look at it, and you may throw other guys together in camp to sort of get a feel. So then when the regular season comes, they're not going well, 'Geez. I've never even played with this guy.' So we want to kind of mix and match a little bit and then see how it looks. We just don't know how guys are going to read off each other, and that's why we go through it."