Ohtani before Ohtani? Inside the Dodgers’ Fernandomania
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Paul Gutierrez, ESPN Staff Writer
THE CALL, LIKE the one that arrived hours before Opening Day in 1981, came out of nowhere.
And Fernando Valenzuela, just as he had been some 42 years earlier, was caught off guard.
Being asked, as a 20-year-old who had never started a major league game, if he was ready to take the mound to open the season for the pennant-contending Los Angeles Dodgers was one thing. Being told at the age of 62 — after using that initial start more than four decades earlier to launch the cultural phenomenon known as Fernandomania as well as a decorated 17-season career — that his iconic uniform number 34 was being retired by the Dodgers? Well, that was una otra cosa.
Another thing. Entirely.
The Dodgers usually only retire the numbers of players who are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame (the late Jim Gilliam was the previous lone exception, his number 19 retired two days after his sudden passing in 1978), and Valenzuela fell off the writers’ ballot after garnering just 3.8% of the vote in 2004.
And yet an exception was made thanks to the appeal and continued cultural impact of the Dodgers’ homegrown Mexican pitcher who transcended the game and transformed a fan base.
“What do you want me to say? Of course I was surprised,” Valenzuela recently told ESPN.com with a laugh. “I never expected this to happen. You’ve got to be in Cooperstown. … It was a surprise.
“It’s not just for me, but for the people — the fans and my family.”
As such, Valenzuela will become the 12th Dodger to be so honored, joining the likes of Jackie Robinson (42), Sandy Koufax (32), Don Drysdale (53) and Tommy Lasorda (2) in a pregame ceremony Friday at Dodger Stadium. In fact, it’s a weekend-long fiesta for “El Toro,” with a bobblehead in Valenzuela’s likeness given to fans Saturday and a replica of his 1981 World Series championship ring passed out Sunday.
His number being retired, though, is the most impactful. Dodgers president Stan Kasten said in February the team “reviewed” its Hall of Fame members-only policy for number retirement after a “citywide call” by fans.
“What he accomplished during his playing career, not only on the field but in the community, is extraordinary,” Kasten said at the team’s FanFest. “He truly lit up the imaginations of baseball fans everywhere. It’s hard to envision a player having a greater impact on a fan base than the one Fernando has had.”
VALENZUELA GREW UP in anonymity in the Mexican village of Etchohuaquila in Sonora, where he and his five brothers slept in one bed. He spoke no English as he dominated the American pastime.
In a pre-Internet world, Valenzuela was more than an anomaly. He was, according to Hall of Fame Dodgers Spanish language announcer Jaime Jarrin, a mystery.
“His charisma was unbelievable,” said Jarrin, who served as Valenzuela’s interpreter early in his career. “The fact that he came here to the major leagues [in September 1980] after spending just a few weeks in San Antonio at Double-A — and from the beginning, he was just amazing. And the people fell in love with him. … He was only 19 years old. Little bit chubby, long hair, Yaqui Indian features. Those things really cultivated the people and they fell in love with Fernando in a matter of a few weeks.”
Answering Lasorda’s call for that emergency assignment — it was the first of Valenzuela’s six Opening Day starts with the Dodgers; only Clayton Kershaw (9), Drysdale (7) and Don Sutton (7) have more — Valenzuela twirled a 2-0 shutout at the Houston Astros and did not look back.
The cherubic lefthander won his first eight starts and, along with that late-1980 call-up, Valenzuela was 10-0 with five shutouts, eight complete games and a 0.40 earned run average in his first 18 career games. As a rookie, he started the 1981 All-Star Game, held the Dodgers afloat in a deciding Game 5 of the National League Championship Game against the Montreal Expos and beat the New York Yankees in Game 3 of the World Series en route to the Dodgers’ first title in 16 years.
“He was a younger player that was way ahead of his time, especially intellectually and as far as baseball was concerned,” said Dusty Baker, who mentored Valenzuela in Los Angeles during his rookie year. “Any man that I meet — man, woman or child — when they find out I played with the Dodgers, they want to know, ‘Oh really, were you friendly with Fernando?’ Yeah, that was my guy.”
He remains the only player to win the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards in the same season, while also visiting the White House … midseason, in an event to honor then-Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo.
That Valenzuela was doing it with a screwball, a pitch not really in vogue since Carl Hubbell was dealing before World War II ended, and one Valenzuela had been taught by Dodgers right-hander Bobby Castillo less than two years earlier, was as fascinating as it was game changing.
“Babo threw it hard, so it sunk,” Valenzuela said. “I thought, What if I took some speed off it, and it dropped more like a curveball?” The results were devastating.
Meanwhile…with the #Dodgers retiring Fernando Valenzuela’s No. 34 mañana, I have a story posting Friday on the iconic left-hander’s cultural impact with the phenomenon known as Fernandomania. Here, he showed me his screwball grip… pic.twitter.com/1G1BRYYtL3
— Paul Gutierrez (@PGutierrezESPN) August 10, 2023
Yet, if his stats talked for themselves, Valenzuela’s cultural impact spoke at least two languages — and at a time it was desperately needed for the Dodgers.
When Dodger Stadium opened in Chavez Ravine in 1962, it was on the heels of a 10-year battle with residents who had lost their homes in the area after eminent domain was declared to purportedly build public housing. After those plans fell through, the Dodgers, who had moved from Brooklyn, got a sweetheart deal to build on the land.
“I had a brother-in-law who would never go to Dodger games, he could just never have anything to do with them, really, because of that,” said Dr. Felix Gutierrez, a professor of journalism emeritus at USC who focuses on racial diversity, media and the history of Latino news in the United States. “I had another brother-in-law who loved the Dodgers. He’d listen to the games right and left. So there was a mix of emotions about the Dodgers when Fernando hit.”
Valenzuela’s arrival and prominence served as a salve, of sorts, to Los Angeles Latinos in general, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in particular, who had sworn off attending games at Dodger Stadium.
And it crossed sporting spectrums.
Across town, future Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Tom Flores, whose family moved to Central California from Mexico when he was young, was watching, especially after his Raiders relocated to Los Angeles in 1982.
“It was kinda neat,” Flores said. “Finally, there was some Mexican on the mound that they were honoring.
“I thought, ‘This guy’s a little quirky, because he had that high kick and his eyes disappeared into his forehead.’ But, boy, when that ball left his hand, it was zooming. And he had great control, and he was a competitive guy. He really was more than people realized. I admired him. He was low-key.”
In East L.A , a young boxer and his family took notice, often watching Valenzuela pitch on their tiny TV.
“He was hope, he was our way out, you know?” Oscar De La Hoya said. “If he can do it, we can do it. People like that, like Fernando, paved the way and now people like me are paving the way and it’s a trickle effect.”
De La Hoya wore a No. 34 jersey when he threw out a ceremonial first pitch at Dodger Stadium in 2016.
“That was by design,” laughed De La Hoya, who became golfing buddies with Valenzuela later in life. “He was a hero to us because we just felt so proud, that he came from Mexico, that he was one of us.
“Proud of, obviously, how he pitched and becoming a winner. He was just inspirational to us.”
Valenzuela took Mexicans and Mexican-Americans out of the shadows, even if he did not realize it at the time. Attendance jumped by an average of 7,500 for his starts at Dodger Stadium in 1981, according to the Society for American Baseball Research.
“As big a star that he was, he exemplified Mexicans coming to the United States, doing good work, knowing their job, doing their job, by his productivity, by his skills,” Gutierrez said. “We’ve always had the talent; we didn’t always have the opportunity. He was afforded the opportunity and he made the most of it.
“He stayed linked and tied to his people, to his community. We saw him as a representative of Mexicans and Latinos to the rest of L.A. — ‘Hey, look what we can do. Give us the opportunity.'”
“With my respects to Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Willie Mays, all of the major leaguers, Fernando is the one that created more new baseball followers,” Jarrin said. “People from Mexico, from Central America, from South America, they didn’t care at all about baseball, but they fell in love with the game. It was unbelievable. In those days, of course, we didn’t have the computers that we have now. Everything was through telephone calls or letters or cards — I was swamped by that — to find out something about Fernando.”
Usual staid stadiums came to life on the road.
“He had such a charisma that everywhere we went, people fell in love with him,” Jarrin said. “Going to Chicago, they were averaging 12,000 people. But when Fernando was announced, it was sold out, 31,000 people there. Same thing in New York. Same thing in St. Louis. It was magic.”
Now, the Los Angeles Times says 40% of the Dodgers fanbase is Latino, and credits Valenzuela with that uptick.
“I was a witness, man,” said Dave Stewart, who pitched in 32 games for the Dodgers during Valenzuela’s rookie season. “He blew up everywhere we went. You could expect packed stadiums and people at the ballpark early. Early. Just to see him. The media attention was just unbelievable. I had never seen anything like it before, or since, and I’ve been around the game now for 48 years.
“People talk about [Shohei] Ohtani, and Ohtani is a great attraction, but I don’t believe the madness is as crazy as it was for Fernando. … Fernando was [playing] a single day, and Ohtani is every day. But in a single day, I’ve never seen such madness in my life.”
FROM 1983 to 1987, Valenzuela averaged 262 innings pitched and 13 complete games for the Dodgers. He had a streak of 255 consecutive starts, which ended August 1988. He had 20 complete games in 1986, when he won a league-high 21 games and had a 3.14 ERA and finished second in the NL Cy Young voting. He had 96 complete games in his first seven seasons. (For comparison, Justin Verlander, last year’s AL Cy Young winner, has 26 complete games … in 18 years.)
“Termino lo que empiezo,” Valenzuela was fond of saying — I finish what I start.
One of the more memorable came June 29, 1990. A few hours after watching his old teammate Stewart throw a no-hitter for the Oakland A’s, Valenzuela slyly predicted another no-no might be witnessed that night. Sure enough, he went out and authored his own.
“This is the honest to God truth,” Stewart said softly. “What a great moment in baseball and in baseball history — if I have to share that moment, who better to share the moment with?”
Valenzuela left the Dodgers the next year and bounced around the league, playing one season each for the Angels, Baltimore Orioles and Philadelphia Phillies and two for the San Diego Padres. His last MLB game came in 1997, but he continued pitching occasionally in Mexico up until 2006.
Through all those years, while capturing the imagination of American baseball fans, he also won the hearts and minds of his Mexican countrymen, especially those of ballplayers with dreams of pitching in las grandes ligas. In 2021, Julio Urías, another Dodgers lefty with an arsenal of filthy pitches, joined him as one of just four Mexican-born pitchers to win at least 20 games in a season. But unlike Valenzuela, Urías had a very specific Mexican role model to look up to as he made his way to L.A.
“I can’t ask for more, being Mexican and wearing the same jersey as he did,” Urías said in Spanish. “Obviously, Fernando, for us as Mexicans, is an inspiration, the biggest star that Mexican baseball has given us.
“We have to give him the respect he has earned with everything he did in his time and everything he keeps doing. To get to the point where your number is retired, that’s something very big, especially being Mexican, facing all the adversities and it being more difficult for him in his time.
“I’m very happy and fortunate to be able to know him, and share and enjoy such a big day with his number retirement.”
While Valenzuela wore No. 34 in many of those big league stops after his days in Los Angeles, no player has worn it for the Dodgers since he was released near the end of spring training in 1991. Mitch Poole, the team’s visiting clubhouse manager who has been with the Dodgers since becoming a bat boy in 1985, made it his mission to keep No. 34 out of circulation.
“The Mexican community is so huge here in L.A,” said Poole, who has also served as the Dodgers’ assistant clubhouse and head equipment managers. “I wasn’t there yet in ’81 but I came to see the outpouring of emotions from the Mexican-American community, too. So I said, as long as I’m here, I will not release that number. As a thank you to him.”
It was an unwritten policy honored by clubbies and players alike. The closest anyone came to requesting the number was when Manny Ramirez came to Los Angeles in 2008. He wanted it as a tribute to his old Boston Red Sox teammate David Ortiz. After Poole suggested No. 28, to honor fellow Dominican and Dodgers star Pedro Guerrero, Ramirez settled for No. 99.
(Though Valenzuela has never spoken on why he chose the number, there is a conspiracy theory that wearing the digits was free publicity for Channel 34 in Los Angeles, a Spanish-language station.)
“Officially, ’34’ was not retired, but in our hearts, it was retired,” Poole said. “I take pride in the fact that we didn’t release that number. It’s important to me that the Mexican community got something out of it. And he deserves it. He did so many things that brought attention to the community.”
“I think that they took too long to recognize Fernando and to retire his number,” Jarrin said. “It’s something that he really, really deserves, and the community is very, very aware of that, and they are very pleased, very happy. There’s no question about it.”
It has been a long road from the dusty ball fields of Etchohuaquila to the emerald green of Chavez Ravine. Valenzuela returned to the Dodgers in 2004, joining Jarrin in the broadcast booth. Though Jarrin retired in 2022, Valenzuela remains today.
Through it all, Valenzuela, who became an American citizen in 2015, owns a Mexican League team in Cancun and has a stadium named after him in Hermosillo, has rarely taken the time to stop and enjoy the sights. But Friday, when he looks up and sees his No. 34 in the Dodger Stadium rafters, he mused, maybe then it will hit him.
“I don’t like to talk about myself but if what I did helped people, I’m happy, yeah,” Valenzuela said. “It’s great. If a player from Mexico coming up says they have more chance, more opportunity, a good chance to do something in the big leagues, if I did something that helped a little bit, I’m great. You can have the talent and believe in yourself, but you have to take advantage of the opportunity. That makes me feel fine. Feel good.”
And that’s not surprising at all.
The Washington Capitals and Vegas Golden Knights are at the same crossroads, facing 2-1 deficits ahead of road playoff games Monday.
First up on the schedule is Capitals-Carolina Hurricanes (7 p.m. ET, TNT), followed by Golden Knights-Edmonton Oilers (9:30 p.m. ET, TNT).
Read on for game previews with statistical insights from ESPN Research, a recap of what went down in Sunday’s games and the Three Stars of Sunday from Arda Öcal.
Matchup notes
Washington Capitals at Carolina Hurricanes
Game 4 | 7 p.m. ET | TNT
With a 2-1 series lead, the Canes are now -650 favorites to win this series, while the Capitals are +425. Carolina has also jumped to second in the Stanley Cup futures table, at +350, while the Capitals are now +2500.
This is the second straight series in which the Canes led 2-1 (they beat the Devils in five games in Round 1). Carolina/Hartford is 9-4 all time in best-of-seven series when leading 2-1.
Game 3 was the Canes’ first playoff shutout win since Game 2 of the 2022 second round against the Rangers. It was the Caps’ first shutout loss since Game 5 of the 2020 first round against the Islanders.
Frederik Andersen‘s shutout was the fourth of his playoff career, but his first postseason clean sheet as a Hurricane. He joins Cam Talbot as the only active goalies with a playoff shutout for three different franchises.
Andrei Svechnikov now has six goals this postseason, which is the 17th instance of a Hurricanes/Whalers player scoring six or more goals in a single postseason.
The four goals allowed by Logan Thompson in Game 3 were more than his combined goals against in Games 1 and 2, and the most since Game 3 of the first round against Montreal (five).
Vegas Golden Knights at Edmonton Oilers
Game 4 | 9:30 p.m. ET | TNT
The Oilers’ and Knights’ series odds contracted after Vegas’ Game 3 win. Edmonton is now -250 to win, whereas Vegas is +200 to do so. The Oilers have the third-shortest Cup futures odds at +360, while the Knights are third longest at +1000.
Vegas’ Reilly Smith was credited with the winning goal in Game 3 with 0.4 seconds left on the clock after the puck angled in off Leon Draisaitl‘s stick. It goes in the record books as being scored with one second left in the third period — tied for the latest go-ahead goal in regulation in Stanley Cup playoff history with Colorado’s Nazem Kadri in 2020 and Carolina’s Jussi Jokinen in 2009.
Jack Eichel enters Game 4 riding an active six-game assist streak, which is tied for the Golden Knights’ postseason record. Mark Stone (2023) and Smith (2018) also accomplished the feat.
Connor McDavid now has 40 career playoff goals; he’s the seventh Oilers player to reach that benchmark.
Edmonton’s Corey Perry scored two goals in the first period of Game 3, becoming the third-oldest player in Stanley Cup playoff history with a multigoal period; at 39 years, 359 days old, he is behind Nicklas Lidstrom (41) and Teemu Selanne (40) at the time they had a multigoal period in a playoff game.
Öcal’s Three Stars from Sunday
The reigning Stanley Cup champions played their best game of the postseason. They limited the Maple Leafs to 22 shots on goal, owned the neutral zone, and peppered Toronto’s Joseph Woll with 37 shots en route to a 2-0 win. (Small shoutout to Woll, who played great — this game could’ve easily been 8-0.)
With a goal and two assists in Game 3, Rantanen became the first player in Stanley Cup playoffs history with five three-point games through a team’s first 10 contests. His first of those games was in Game 5 of the first round.
Bobrovsky didn’t have the busiest night of his playoff career, but he stopped all 22 shots on goal, his fifth career postseason clean sheet.
Sunday’s recaps
Dallas Stars 5, Winnipeg Jets 2
DAL leads 2-1 | Game 4 Tuesday
The Stars returned home having earned home-ice advantage in the series with a split of the first two games in Winnipeg, and from the start of this one, they looked like they did not want to give it back. Dallas’ Roope Hintz scored 2:27 in on a power play, and while Kyle Connor answered midway through the first, Thomas Harley responded thereafter, giving Dallas a 2-1 edge after the first. Nino Niederreiter scored his fourth goal of the playoffs to knot the game at two, but then the third period was all Stars. Alexander Petrovic and Mikko Rantanen scored within 50 seconds of each other, and Wyatt Johnston put the exclamation point on the contest with a goal at 14:06. Full recap.
1:29
Tempers flare late after Max Domi’s big hit on Aleksander Barkov
Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov is shaken up after taking a hit from Max Domi late in the game.
Florida Panthers 2, Toronto Maple Leafs 0
Series tied 2-2 | Game 5 Wednesday
It’s down to a best-of-three for the Atlantic Division crown. Carter Verhaeghe kicked off the scoring for the Panthers at 15:45 of the first, and the 1-0 score would persist until 12:09 of the third, when Sam Bennett added his fifth of the postseason to make it 2-0. That was more than enough for Sergei Bobrovsky, who saved all 23 shots the Maple Leafs sent on goal. Joseph Woll was no slouch in the Leafs’ cage, either, saving 35 of 37. Tempers flared late in the game after Toronto’s Max Domi boarded Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov and a small melee ensued. Will that carry over into Game 5? Full recap.
0:34
Wyatt Johnston pokes in Stars’ 3rd goal of 3rd period
Wyatt Johnston taps in a goal for the Stars to pad their lead in the third period vs. the Jets.
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Ryan S. Clark
LAS VEGAS — Jack Eichel is everything everywhere all at once for the Vegas Golden Knights.
You’re going to see Eichel start games. You’re going to see him score goals. You’re going to see his work lead to goals for his teammates. You’re going to see him score on the power play. Chances are — and not as in Chance, the Golden Knights’ mascot — you already knew that.
But what you might not realize? You’re also going to see him winning defensive zone faceoffs while playing a big role on the penalty kill. You’re going to see him among the special group that Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy trusts to either get the lead or defend the lead in the final two minutes.
Eichel’s status as a top-line center made him the centerpiece of possibly the biggest trade in the history of a franchise that has embodied the winning-at-all-costs philosophy. But Eichel’s focus was on something more: becoming a complete center who can be sent out on the ice in any situation.
Getting there involved earning Cassidy’s trust — which meant arriving at a certain realization about his game.
“When I got here, we had Chandler Stephenson, who is a really good-way center. You have William Karlsson, who is a really good two-way center,” Eichel said. “I looked around and said, ‘If I want to get the ice time and be trusted in these situations, I have to earn the trust of the coach and become more detailed and responsible defensively.'”
For all the different moves that Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon has made to tweak his roster, there are constants. One of them is having a stack of two-way centers on all four lines, to the point that one of them might be moved to the wing because the Golden Knights have that much depth.
Not that Eichel couldn’t be used in defensive situations earlier in his career. It’s just that the No. 2 pick of the 2015 NHL draft was always known more for what he did in the offensive zone, going back to his time at Boston University, where he won the Hobey Baker Award in his lone season, and in six seasons with the Buffalo Sabres.
“I [penalty] killed a little bit when I was in Buffalo, and sometimes when you have a team that’s not winning, you can be honed as a poor defensive forward or a defensive liability,” Eichel said. “I also think just part of it is maturity. It’s understanding what it takes to win, and coming here and having the opportunity to play in this system with this organization, and then allowing me to grow my game, and then having the opportunity to do that.”
THERE WERE A NUMBER of terms that were associated with Eichel when he was a draft prospect in 2015: Future captain. Future All-Star. Future franchise savior.
Being the strongest penalty killer, however, wasn’t one of them.
Eichel acknowledges he was on the penalty kill with the Sabres. It was enough to make him a contributor, but he never was the center anchoring a short-handed unit. The most short-handed minutes he received in a single season was 53:13 in his third season in Buffalo, according to Natural Stat Trick.
“It’s about the details, but I think a lot of young players when they come into the league are a bit raw,” Eichel explained. “They’re still used to having the puck on their stick for so much time during the game and they rely on their offense. You have to find out ways to round your game off and become a more complete player.”
Getting traded to Vegas in November 2021 was a significant shift. It took Eichel from a franchise that struggled to win — despite finding lots of talented players — to an organization for which “failure” was finishing that 2021-22 season with 94 points and missing the postseason by a single point — after reaching the playoffs in four consecutive campaigns.
That playoff miss prompted the Golden Knights to move on from coach Peter DeBoer and hire Cassidy, who had just been let go by the Boston Bruins. In Cassidy, the Golden Knights got an experienced coach whose defensive philosophies were at the core of why the Bruins reached the playoffs in six straight seasons.
“It did take time,” Karlsson said about learning Cassidy’s system. “We weren’t used to it. But once we learn it, you react with your instincts. You don’t have to think about it anymore because it’s a really good system. He usually has the center in a really good position, but also a really good position to transition into the offensive zone. But there are a lot of defensive details.”
Eichel made an impact in his first full season with Vegas in 2022-23. He led the Golden Knights with 66 points, and his 27 goals were second on the team. Eichel also led the club with 223 shots on goal, while scoring 14 power-play points.
The way McCrimmon constructed the Golden Knights meant that for Eichel to attain more ice time in those crucial situations, he needed to find room in a crowded landscape. The Knights had Karlsson and Stephenson. And they also had Ivan Barbashev, Brett Howden, Nicolas Roy, Reilly Smith and Mark Stone as part of the forward core. All of them logged more short-handed minutes than Eichel when they won the Stanley Cup in 2023.
Still, Eichel would be second on the team in 5-on-5 minutes during the playoffs behind Jonathan Marchessault, while finishing with six goals and 26 points in 22 games.
How did Eichel go about letting Cassidy know that he could be trusted in those situations? It wasn’t through anything he said. It was about using every practice and every game to prove he was ready to handle those demands.
“If I’m put in a situation and I don’t produce a result that is positive for the group? Then, I’m not going to have opportunities,” Eichel said. “It’s about gaining trust through good play, working with the coaches on the structure, what they are looking for and then being able to go out and execute it. I think that’s been a big, big thing.”
Even if he wasn’t heavily used on the penalty kill with the Sabres, Eichel was still playing a lot. He averaged more than 19 minutes per game in every season in Buffalo, and had four straight seasons of more than 20 minutes per contest.
In his first season with Cassidy in 2022-23, Eichel averaged a career-low 18:46 of ice time per game in the regular season, and logged 18:59 per game in the playoffs en route to the Cup.
The investment Eichel made in becoming a more responsible player paved the way for his increased minutes in the seasons that followed. There was also an opportunity for someone to take those short-handed minutes, because Smith was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins following the Cup win in 2023.
Eichel would finish 2023-24 with a career-high 20:31 in ice time per game in 2023-24, and 123:48 in short-handed ice time, which was second among all Vegas centers behind Karlsson. He was also second in total power-play ice time, and seventh in total 5-on-5 ice time on the team — mainly due to missing 19 games.
“We’ve always had good centers. I think we definitely took a crazy step forward when we added Jack,” said Stone, a two-time Selke Trophy finalist as the game’s best two-way forward. “You go from having three guys to four guys, maybe five guys, even. Last year, he kind of took over and this year he took over for Stephenson.”
LOSING MARCHESSAULT AND STEPHENSON to free agency — in an offseason in which they saw six players from their 2023 Stanley Cup-winning team depart — meant the Golden Knights needed to find solutions to make up for those departures.
Eichel provided the Golden Knights with the best season of his career. His 66 assists and 94 points were both career highs. Some point out that Eichel could have had his first 100-point campaign if not for missing five games.
Then there’s his usage. Eichel led all Golden Knights forwards in average ice time (a career high of 20:32 per game), 5-on-5 ice time and power-play minutes. As for short-handed minutes? Eichel led all forwards in that too, by a margin of 35 minutes more than Howden. He was second in defensive zone faceoffs taken.
There was also an underlying theme of limiting mistakes. Vegas finished the regular season with the second-fewest penalty minutes in the NHL. And yes, Eichel was at the heart of that too, as he had only eight penalty minutes.
“It helps when you have the puck a lot,” Stone said. “He’s good in the D-zone, but he has the puck on his stick more than he doesn’t. He plays the D-zone quick, but when you’re that good of a player, the other team is thinking about not making mistakes.”
Karlsson explained how Cassidy’s system can be physically demanding for anyone playing down the middle. He said there are the natural expectations that come with playing center in today’s NHL. But one of the reasons why the Golden Knights place such an emphasis on conditioning and strength training is so their centers are prepared to play those longer shifts in the event they can’t get off the ice.
Stone added that Cassidy’s structure means centers are doing “a lot of skating,” while the wingers are expected to deny the other team from getting shots from the point and being active in the top of the ice.
“He’s been handling it well this year,” Karlsson said. “He’s in Year 3 now of Butch and his assistants. It’s kind of natural to him now and he’s good. He’s good at picking up things like stripping a guy off the top as he’s a big, strong guy. He reads the game well, so he’s really turning into a 200-foot player.”
During Cassidy’s time with the Bruins, he worked with venerable two-way centers such as six-time Selke Trophy winner Patrice Bergeron and stalwart second-line pivot David Krejci. In discussing those two, Cassidy admitted that they “probably taught me more than I taught them.”
But when it came to his conversations with Eichel, Cassidy said that he talked about what he saw from Bergeron and Krejci — the value they saw and provided in efficient operations in the defensive zone.
Cassidy said he and his staff started seeing that investment in Eichel pay off during their championship season. He’s since grown in those responsibilities as a two-way player who can now be used in every situation.
“That’s on the player,” Cassidy said. “They’ve got to decide if that’s what they want to do because it’s not easy to check. It’s a mindset a lot of nights, and we’ve got to be going to work and he’s done it. He’s getting credit for it, and he should.”
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