Golden Knights Mark Stone Pulled His Annual Magic Trick And Stars Fans Were Not Digging It

Vegas Golden Knights captain Mark Stone is a playoff kind of guy. The man just shows up during the playoffs.

I mean that literally.

In the last two seasons, Stone has missed significant time due to injury and was placed on long-term injured reserve. That freed up cap space for the Golden Knights to make significant trades at the deadline — this year adding Noah Hanafin and Tomas Hertl — only for Stone to return at the start of the playoffs when salary cap restrictions aren't in place.

In 2023, Stone had a back injury that kept him out of the lineup from February until the start of the playoffs, at which point he completely popped off with 24 points in 22 games and led the Golden Knights to a Stanley Cup.

This season, it was a lacerated spleen (ow ow ow) that kept Stone sidelined until he was cleared to play ahead Game 1 of the Golden Knights' first-round series against the Dallas Stars; a rematch of last season's Western Conference Final.

Stone wound up on LTIR around the same time in 2022 as well, but that was the only season in Vegas' franchise history that they failed to make the playoffs.

So, Stone hit the ice for the first time Monday night in Dallas, and how did it go?

It went pretty well. He scored the first goal of the series in under two minutes.

There's a lot of talk about what to do about this LTIR loophole. Vegas is the current poster child for it (in fact Hertl was on LTIR when he came over in a trade with the Sharks which freed up more space) but they're far from the first team to do this.

The Tampa Bay Lightning were often pointed to as Exhibit A for why some changes need to be made to this rule. Their postseason payroll was usually exceedingly high when they made three straight Cup Final appearances.

If there's any fanbase that will understand how this works, it's Dallas. They lost the 2020 Cup Final to the Lightning and the 2023 Western Conference Final to the Golden Knights.

So, when Stone was interviewed by ESPN's Leah Hextall between periods, he got boos so loud that he couldn't hear some of the questions.

Pretty sure they weren't saying "Boo-urns…"

Vegas took Game 1 by a score of 4-3. Game 2 will be Wednesday night in Dallas.