<p>Jack Eichel probably feels plenty fortunate already. He’s one of the world’s best hockey players. He turned his career around when the <a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/vegas-golden-knights/line-combinations">Vegas Golden Knights </a>traded for him in 2021 and allowed him to have an unprecedented disk-replacement surgery on his neck. He won the Stanley Cup in 2022-23 to cap his first playoff run in his eighth season.</p>



<p>But 2025-26 could go down as the most magical season of his career – for so many reasons.</p>



<p>First came the long-term contract commitment. Not that Eichel openly expressed much concern about getting a deal done, but any athlete naturally feels at peace putting pen to paper in time for the start of his season, and he did so Oct. 8, the day of Vegas’ season opener, on an eight-year, $108-million extension paying him $13.5 million annually.</p><div class="injected-ad injected-video" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="0" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="136"></div>



<p>Now, two weeks and change into the season, Eichel is lapping the field in the NHL scoring race with a staggering 16 points in his first seven games. His Golden Knights have yet to lose in regulation, going 5-0-2. Their power-play, augmented by offseason mega-signing Mitch Marner, converts at a league-best 32.1 percent so far.</p>



<p>Assuming Mark Stone returns from his wrist injury in time to contribute in the postseason, Vegas looks like the odds-on favorite to win the Stanley Cup next June, which would be a thrilling feat for Eichel to experience a second time. But he also could bring home significant individual hardware for the first time in his career. That isn’t mere recency bias over his quick start talking, to be clear; Eichel finished fifth in the Hart and Selke Trophy votes last season. At 28, he has matured into one of the NHL’s top play-driving centers. Early this season, the Golden Knights carry an expected goal percentage north of 58 with him on the ice, which would be a career best if it holds. Looking like a 100-point threat and a top-end two-way pivot, Eichel has a real chance to become just the second NHLer to win the Hart and Selke in the same year. Sergei Fedorov in 1993-94 is the lone player to do it.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="1" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="220"></div>



<p>The commitment to 200-foot play wasn’t always a key club in Eichel’s bag. It’s developed over time, and he attributes demanding Vegas head coach coach Bruce Cassidy to the change.</p>



<p>“When you’re young and you’re coming to the league, you’re like a raw offensive talent, right?” Eichel told Daily Faceoff last month at the Player Media Tour in Vegas. “A lot of guys are, myself included. You’re used to getting away with probably not being as good in the details of the game and the defensive side of things, because you’re an offensive guy who produces points and can score goals. I was sort of in that situation. We had a few different coaches in Buffalo as well, so you’re trying to manage finding your game and then getting into the system and being a part of that. Just coming to Vegas, being able to work more on some of those details, I give Bruce a lot of credit. He was definitely on me about those things.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="2" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="167"></div>



<p>“I think you learn that if you want to build the coach’s trust and have him put you out there in key moments and key situations, then you have to be sound defensively and have those details in that part of the game figured out. You’re always a work in progress and trying to find ways to round your game out. I’ve tried to do that by. By no means a finished product, but it’s definitely something I’ve put more of an emphasis on. And credit to our D-corps and the guys I play with and our system and our coaching staff, because I think it really bodes well for my play. The combination of those things just allowed me to thrive a little more as a 200-foot center.”</p>



<p>If the contract, a potential Cup and an MVP season aren’t enough to satiate Eichel…how about an Olympic gold medal, too? Team USA was a goal away from winning the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off, and that was minus defensemen Quinn Hughes and Charlie McAvoy, so the Americans arguably will head to the 2026 Milano Cortina Games as the favorite. They haven’t won a best-on-best men’s tournament since the 1996 World Cup and haven’t captured Olympic gold since the 1980 Miracle on Ice. As Eichel puts it, anything less than a win would qualify not as a failure but as a disappointment. And the fast, electrifying, bloody 4 Nations games whetted the players’ appetites for an intensity they’d never before experienced during international competition.</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="3" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="252"></div>



<p>“It had been such a long time, especially since there’s a newer generation of players representing their country that had never really done that,” Eichel told The Hockey News’ Ryan Kennedy at the Player Media Tour. “It was new for a lot of us with the exception of [Sidney Crosby] and Drew Doughty and maybe a couple of guys and then a few guys on a couple other teams, the [Erik] Karlssons of the world, who we’ve been there and done it. But for us Americans, none of us had done it. So it’s sort of that new age that hadn’t had that opportunity to play and represent your country in a situation where you have the best other players in the nation on your team and you’re playing a best-on-best situation.”</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="4" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="132"></div>



<p>It feels like the stage is set for an unbelievably exciting season, potentially packed with glory for Eichel, which is such a far cry from the dark times he experienced early in his career as a <a href="https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/buffalo-sabres/line-combinations">Buffalo Sabre</a>. But Eichel, one of the league’s more thoughtful players when you get him in a comfortable setting, tries not to get too high or too low throughout the course of the season.</p>



<p>“Yeah, that’s the nature of our league: we could play a great game Tuesday and a shit game Wednesday,” he told The Score’s John Matisz at the Player Media Tour. “I think just finding that sense of even keel and if you have a good game, OK, well, you can enjoy it for a minute or two, but it’s kind of on to the next. That’s the biggest thing. The games come so quickly and the season’s so long that if it’s a bad game, if it’s a good game, it’s important to move on from it.”</p><div class="injected-ad" data-nn-ad-tech-injection-count="5" data-nn-ad-tech-max-gap="130" data-nn-ad-tech-current-gap="167"></div>



<p>So it’s head down and push forward for now. With captain Stone hurt, not to mention starting goaltender Adin Hill and veteran defensemen Noah Hanifin and Alex Pietrangelo, Eichel is needed more than ever, so he can’t look too far ahead. But by the end of 2025-26, he may have a masterpiece of a year to admire.</p>



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