LAS VEGAS – For seven years, it seemed as though every time the Vegas Golden Knights needed a goal in the worst way, Jonathan Marchessault delivered.
It will have to be someone else moving forward.
After not reaching a contract extension, Marchessault hit the free-agent market on Monday morning and quickly signed a five-year deal with the Nashville Predators worth $5.5 million per season.
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Signing the 33-year-old winger to a long-term contract obviously carries risk for Nashville, and apparently it was one that Vegas general manager Kelly McCrimmon wasn’t willing to take. Marchessault will be 38 when this contract expires.
Marchessault hoped was to remain a Golden Knight, and shortly after signing with Nashville, he voiced his disappointment with Vegas in an interview with TSN.
“The tough part of it was, there wasn’t really a decent offer on the table,” Marchessault said. “I don’t think they tried their best to keep me, but I mean that’s part of the business and they have probably other plans. That’s the business we’re in, so you move on and Nashville was the best fit for me.”
The Golden Knights have made many tough roster decisions over the past several years. With Marchessault heading to Nashville and William Carrier signing with Carolina, only three players from the inaugural season remain on the roster: William Karlsson, Shea Theodore and Brayden McNabb.
That’s the business of professional hockey with a salary cap. Vegas opted not to pay Marchessault into his late 30s, and only time will tell if it was the correct decision. They’ve moved on from several fan favorites in the past, and many times it’s worked out in their favor.
One thing is certain, though: replacing Marchessault won’t be easy.
All NHL players have a small, zip-up bag that they use at the rink every day, and bring on the road with them. It usually has a roll or two of stick tape, and any small essential items that they could need between skates. Marchessault has a few keepsakes inside his to remind him of his past – a tradition he learned from Jaromír Jágr when they were teammates in Florida.
One of the keepsakes is a plastic rat that he grabbed off the ice from his time with the Florida Panthers. It’s unknown what his keepsake will be from his time in Vegas. The symbols of his best memories with the team are far too big to fit inside the accessory pouch.
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The lasting memory of his time in a Golden Knights sweater, which many fans will hold onto, came moments after winning the Stanley Cup in 2023, as he skated to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and accepted the Conn Smythe Trophy.
He’s listed at only 5-foot-9, and that’s being generous, but Marchessault lugged the giant trophy around while his four children scampered across the ice wearing gold No. 81 jerseys and holding pink, plastic flamingos that had been tossed by fans. Hours later in the dressing room, he was still trying to find somewhere to set down the giant hardware, his children still at his feet.
What a moment for the Marchessaults 💛🥹@GoldenKnights | #StanleyCup pic.twitter.com/uMGWgNchZH
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) June 14, 2023
It was one of his best memories as a Golden Knight, of which there were plenty.
He leaves as the franchise’s all-time leader in goals (192), assists (225), points (417), games played (514), power-play goals (42), hat tricks (5) and many other stats.
Of all of Marchessault’s team records, none defines his time as a Golden Knight more than his franchise-leading 32 game-winning goals, and that doesn’t even include the six game-winners he scored in the playoffs.
Marchessault was as clutch as hockey players come. His first winning goal came in the 21st game of the team’s history, on Nov. 24, 2017, to lift the Golden Knights to a 5-4 overtime win over San Jose.
He went on to score five more game-winners that regular season, then two more in Vegas’ improbable playoff run to the Cup Final.
Another of Marchessault’s defining moments came in the 2018 conference finals against Winnipeg. Vegas had just lost Game 1 to the Jets and it wasn’t a particularly close contest, after three Jets goals in the opening eight minutes. At the time, many outside the Vegas room believed this was the moment that the clock was striking midnight on the expansion team’s Cinderella story.
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Marchessault, visibly upset with the performance, stepped up to the microphones in the dressing room, called the next game a “must-win” and said plainly, “We are going to show what kind of team we are.”
Marchessault isn’t afraid to talk the talk. In fact, you may never come across a hockey player who talks more. His confident, boisterous voice was a huge part of the Golden Knights’ team identity over the years. Coach Bruce Cassidy recently said it is “part of the fabric of the team.”
Marchessault also walks the walk. Following his blunt comments in 2018, he scored twice in Game 2, including the game-winner, to tie the series 1-1. The series shifted back to Las Vegas, where Marchessault scored two more goals in Game 3, helping ensure the Jets didn’t win another game that year.
The following season (2018-19) Marchessault scored an incredibly clutch goal that has almost been forgotten by history because of the wild events both before and after the goal. It was on April 23, 2019, and the San Jose Sharks used a five-minute power play following Cody Eakin’s controversial major penalty to erase a 3-0 deficit in the final minutes of Game 7.
San Jose scored four goals in four minutes to take a 4-3 lead late. The momentum was behind the Sharks. SAP Center was shaking from the noise from the sold-out crowd. As the final minute ticked off the clock, and Vegas’ season appeared over in devastating fashion, Marchessault one-timed a pass from behind the Sharks’ net past goaltender Martin Jones to tie the game and extend Vegas’ season.
Barclay Goodrow scored late in the following overtime period to end Vegas’ season anyway, mostly erasing what would have become a legendary last-minute goal by Marchessault.
He scored 13 playoff goals to win the Conn Smythe in 2023, including three that were of the game-winning variety. He scored the eventual winner in Game 2 of the second-round against Edmonton, then followed that up with a natural hat trick in Game 6 to end the Oilers season. Fans in Las Vegas covered the front lawn of his home with hats – the second time they did that for a postseason hat trick.
Marchessault had a point in the final 10 games of that playoff run, and either scored or assisted on 37.1 percent of all of Vegas’ goals over the final 15 games.
In seven years, the Golden Knights have scored 47 overtime goals. Marchessault scored or assisted on 19 of them (40.4 percent). Vegas has won 24 games in a shootout, and Marchessault scored in nine of those.
His most memorable may have come on Oct. 28, 2018, when he scored on the first penalty shot of his NHL career to lift Vegas to a 4-3 overtime win over Ottawa. He was immediately tackled to the ice in celebration by teammate Erik Haula.
Marchessault’s final overtime goal wearing a Golden Knights sweater came late in the regular season against St. Louis on March 25. He collected a loose puck behind the Blues’ net, circled, patiently waited out goaltender Jordan Binnington and fired a laser to the corner of the net to earn Vegas a valuable point as it chased the final wild-card spots.
The Golden Knights will miss Marchessault’s rambunctious personality, and the fun and competitiveness he brings to the rink every day for practice. All of the players from the inaugural team are considered “Golden Misfits,” but no player embraced that mentality more than Marchessault. It’s a mentality that helped him become one of the only undrafted players to ever win the Conn Smythe Trophy, and his undeniable presence has been one of the most constant variables in the dressing room over the last seven years.
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Then there’s on the ice, where they’ll miss his ability to score at the most important times even more.
In the end this could be a wise decision to opt out of paying him into his late 30s, but at the moment the breakup stings for both sides.
“At the end of the day, I’ll always look back at some of the best times of my life over there (in Vegas),” Marchessault told TSN. “I’m pretty satisfied and happy with what we accomplished as an organization. I did think I was a big part of it, and they probably thought otherwise for the future, so that’s disappointing.”
(Photo of Jonathan Marchessault: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
