(Photo Credit: SinBin.vegas Photographer Brandon Andreasen)
Mark Stone is officially on the best scoring streak in the history of the Vegas Golden Knights. With his two goals and an assist last night, he pushed his franchise-best point streak to a whopping 14 games. During the streak, he has scored an incredible 12 goals and 23 points, including two game-winning goals, while posting a +8 rating.
Since December 29th, when the streak began, Stone leads the NHL in goals, and only Nikita Kucherov has more points with 27 to Stone’s 23. Stone is shooting at an insane 38.7% rate, having scored on 12 of his last 31 shots.
What’s even more amazing, though,is that the streak isn’t really an outlier this season for the Golden Knights’ captain.
Stone has scored a point in 31 of the 33 games he’s played this season. An injury interrupted his start to the season, but in the first 14 games he played, he scored a point in every single game as well. So, this isn’t even really his first 14-game point streak of the year. Over that stretch he was much more of a distributor, though with six goals and 18 assists.
Even missing 16 games, Stone is still on pace for 101 points. He’s also on pace to set career highs in goals, trending towards 39. He has already set his career best mark in power play goals with seven and he’s just seven power play assists from breaking his career high of 20, which he set last year.
Stone has done a lot of damage on the familiar line with Ivan Barbashev and Jack Eichel, but he’s played fewer than half of his games on that line. He’s played with four different centers (Eichel, Howden, Karlsson, Marner) and five different wingers (Barbashev, Marner, Smith, Howden, Dorofeyev) and it hasn’t slowed him down even the slightest.
Simply put, Stone is currently playing the best hockey of his career, at the age of 33, after multiple seasons riddled with injuries, and without the benefit of a stable line. No matter the situation, he’s been absolutely dominant this season and there are no signs of it slowing down.
