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Golden Knights’ Tuch out week-to-week; Door opens for Glass?

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It looks like the Vegas Golden Knights might limp into the start of the 2019-20 season, but there could be a silver lining to those dark clouds.

The bad news is that winger Alex Tuch is considered week-to-week with an upper-body injury, and is all but ruled out of Vegas’ season-opener against the Sharks on Wed., Oct. 2. It’s unclear if Cody Eakin will be able to suit up for that first game, either, as he’s considered day-to-day, according to Gerard Gallant (by way of reporters including the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s David Schoen).

The Athletic’s Jesse Granger pointed to this fall as the possible moment of Tuch’s injury.

On the bright side, those two injuries greatly improve the odds for Cody Glass to start the season with the Golden Knights, and maybe impress Gallant enough to stick around.

The Golden Knights lost quite a bit of skill during the offseason, thanks largely to cap challenges. On the forward side, they had to give up Erik Haula for nothing, and weren’t able to fit Nikita Gusev into the mix at a price they could accept.

Some of that comes from not finding a way to move on from players like Eakin, not to mention an asset of questionable value in Ryan Reaves, who is a little pricey for what he brings to the ice at a $2.775 million AAV (with Eakin being more expensive at $3.8M). While it’s possible that the Golden Knights simply wouldn’t be able to find a taker for Eakin and/or Reaves, even if they bribed a team to absorb the cap hit, there might be some nights where that decision stings, particularly if Gusev ends up being the next great KHL import this way of Artemi Panarin.

And so, while the Golden Knights’ depth advantage takes a big hit with Tuch out (Tuch is a worthy top-six-quality forward who’s been shuffled to the third line ever since Mark Stone created a domino effect), Glass could conceivably give Vegas that extra “oomph” of offense.

Back on Sept. 12, The Athletic’s Corey Pronman rated Glass, 20, as the league’s 16th-best prospect at age 23 or under (sub required), projecting Glass as a possible future first-line center in the NHL. Glass has already started drawing rave reviews from teammates such as Max Pacioretty, as Jesse Granger reported recently in an article for The Athletic.

“People that know hockey and see the game knew right from day one that this guy has the goods,” Pacioretty said. “That’s why they drafted him so high and why they felt he was so valuable to this organization. You saw a number of trades happen and he was obviously the guy who was untouchable for a reason.”

That said, those same teammates seemed to believe that Glass would best succeed at the NHL level with skilled linemates, rather than more defensive-minded ones who he might line up with on, say, a fourth line.

Theoretically, Glass might get to play with a higher-end talent with Tuch and possibly Eakin out, but might be pushed down the lineup once one or both of those veteran forwards gets healthy. Perhaps that personnel gravity will inevitably pull Glass down to the AHL?

We’ll see, but the optimal scenario might actually be for the Golden Knights to find a way to make sure Tuch and Glass are in the lineup, and are in prominent roles. Such a plethora of forward talent could potentially be something opponents would really struggle to handle.

MORE:
ProHockeyTalk’s 2019 NHL free agency tracker
Your 2019-20 NHL on NBC TV schedule

James O’Brien is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @cyclelikesedins.