Golden Knights’ Mark Stone, Cody Eakin back on track thanks to each other

By Justin Emerson

Thursday, Nov. 21, 2019 | 2 a.m.

Mark Stone hadn’t scored a point in six games and Cody Eakin had just four points in 17 games all season. So the Golden Knights did what any reasonable team would do: put them together.

“You put the two coldest guys together and eventually we’ll figure it out,” Stone quipped.

It worked. Each Vegas forward has a goal in their last two games to bust out of their slumps and help the Golden Knights win those two games to snap a five-game losing streak.

“We were joking about it and laughing,” Eakin said. “We were getting the chances … we turned it around a little bit.”

When a star like Stone goes six games without a point, particularly during a losing streak, it’s concerning. Although there were reasons not to panic, they are easier to digest now after back-to-back games with a goal.

In the 15 preceding games, Stone was playing at a 98-point pace, which would shatter his career-high of 73 set last year. He’s never played at that torrid rate over the course of a season, and expecting as much wasn’t realistic. He was bound to come back to earth.

And there was how he was playing even without the points. In those six games he had 17 shots on goal and seven takeaways, both of which were second on the team. He generated 1.79 expected goals, which was fourth.

When he was on the ice at 5-on-5, his share of scoring chances was second best on the team at 58.4%, his 59.3% Corsi was fourth on the team and his 55.4% expected goals percentage was sixth.

There was nothing about his play that suggested he shouldn’t be scoring. He just wasn’t. But he still felt the weight of a pointless streak, particularly while the team was 1-4-1 in that span.

“There’s times in the game where I get a good chance at a time where it can really change the complexion of the game,” he said. “When you’re winning nothing really matters. When you’re losing like that you kind of put that pressure on yourself to break open a game a little bit.”

Eakin is a different story.

He was mired in a season-long slump following last season’s breakout of 22 goals and 41 points. Prior to Sunday’s game, Eakin was statistically among the league’s worst forwards with an on-ice Corsi of 42.9%, expected-goal share of 41.7% and scoring-chances share of 44.9%.

Then last Wednesday, the Golden Knights put Stone and Eakin together. They’re good friends who spend summers in nearby cottages in Ontario and they had been a penalty-killing pair often this season, but last week against Chicago was the first time they had played extended time at 5-on-5. Jonathan Marchessault joined them on the left wing.

The results were almost immediate. Including a subpar game against the Blackhawks, the trio has produced 59.3% of the shot attempts, 61.2% of the expected goals and 60.7% of the scoring chances in 46:51 of 5-on-5 time. Two goals have been scored with that unit on the ice and zero against. The two coldest players had figured it out.

“We don’t spend a lot of time in our ‘D’ zone,” Marchessault said. “I think we’re playing some good hockey, so it’s good.”

Then he joked: “I must be giving good confidence to them.”

In all likelihood, the line won’t last forever. Four games is a comically small sample size from which to draw season-long conclusions, and there’s much more data to suggest the original lines are the ones that work the best. It could be a week, it could be later in the year, but at some point Marchessault is going to return to William Karlsson and Reilly Smith, Stone will play with Max Pacioretty and Paul Stastny, and Eakin will center the third line.

It’s working right now though. It’s given Stone and Eakin the spark they needed, and when the team is winning, there is no reason to mess with a good thing.

“It was nice to finally get rewarded,” Stone said. “I thought we really worked hard to get ourselves out of it.”

Justin Emerson can be reached at 702-259-8814 or [email protected]. Follow Justin on Twitter at twitter.com/@j15emerson.