Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

William Karlsson will be out ‘week-to-week’ for Golden Knights

2xbAWeRgApyG
Joel Quenneville is named the NHL Coach of the Decade as part of the All-Decade Show, which looks back on the special players, teams, moments, and plays of the 2010s.

Peter DeBoer makes his Vegas Golden Knights coaching debut on Thursday night against the Ottawa Senators, and he will have to do so without one of his best players.

The team announced on Thursday, just a little more than an hour before their game, that William Karlsson is going to be sidelined on a week-to-week basis with an upper-body injury.

Karlsson played 18 minutes in the Golden Knights’ most recent game, a 4-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres, and recorded an assist in the game. He also appeared in each of the team’s first 49 games this season, scoring 10 goals to go with 24 assists. His 34 total points make him the fourth-leading scorer on the team. Prior to this injury he had not missed a single game in his two-and-a-half seasons with the Golden Knights.

He was one of the players Vegas acquired in its initial expansion draft haul. He became an immediate star for the team by scoring 43 goals in their inaugural season and was one of the driving forces behind their stunning run to the Stanley Cup Final. It was one of the most stunning and surprising individual seasons in league history because he had scored just 18 goals in 183 games prior to joining the Golden Knights.

Even though he has never been able to duplicate that initial goal-scoring success in Vegas, he has still become an outstanding two-way player that they can count on for 20 goals, 50 points, and good defensive play over an 82-game season. There is a ton of value in a player like that, and the Golden Knights will miss him while he is sidelined.

The Golden Knights play three games before the All-Star break before getting a nine-day break between games. They enter play on Thursday just outside the Western Conference playoff picture, but are also just three points out of first place in the Pacific Division. They are in the middle of a 10-game stretch that will have them play nine games on the road.

More Golden Knights:

Golden Knights fire Gerard Gallant, hire Peter DeBoer
Golden Knights’ firing of Gallant short-sighted, knee-jerk reaction
Rick Tocchet replaces Gerard Gallant as Pacific Division All-Star coach

Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.