Golden Knights roster review: Jonathan Marchessault

The Review-Journal presents its “Roster Review” series, which will examine each Golden Knights player’s current production and future outlook in alphabetical order. Monday: Left wing Jonathan Marchessault.

Background

Jonathan Marchessault — listed at 5 feet, 9 inches tall — is 2 inches shorter than anyone else on the Golden Knights. Yet he has more swagger and gumption than anyone else in their locker room.

The self-proclaimed “spider monkey” likes to talk a big game, which can make him the butt of a lot of teammates’ jokes. But those same players are ready to do battle with him when the puck drops.

Marchessault, perhaps more than anyone outside of Marc-Andre Fleury, functions as the Knights’ heartbeat. His energy, passion and effort can drag his teammates into the fight on an off night.

The team is 45-11-6 when he scores a goal (.774 points percentage) and 88-69-16 (.554) when he doesn’t.

Performance

Marchessault’s overall impact has been the same in his three seasons with the Knights.

He scores goals, skates hard, defends well and does his best to hold himself and his teammates accountable. He views it as his responsibility as one of the team’s top forwards.

“When you’re part of the top two lines on a team, you have to show up every night,” Marchessault said after scoring a natural hat trick against New Jersey in December. “You have to give a chance to your team to win every night. I wanted to give that. I don’t always get the results that I want, but I’m always trying my best to help my team win.”

It’s no surprise that his brief midseason injury coincided with one of the Knights’ worst stretches of the season. When he missed five games in January with a lower-body ailment, the team fell behind 3-0 four times and lost three of them.

“Looks like we are missing (Marchessault) really bad,” then-coach Gerard Gallant said after a listless 3-0 loss to Columbus, the last of those defeats.

Marchessault has continued to do the same things since the Knights replaced Gallant, who also coached him in Florida, with Pete DeBoer. His effort is always consistent, even as the goals come and go.

Future

It’s pretty easy to know what to expect from Marchessault at this point.

He’s scored about 0.70 points per game three of the past four years (his career-best 2017-18 excluded) while providing energy, feistiness and a mean backcheck. He played 17:20 per game under Gallant and is playing 17:10 with DeBoer as coach.

Marchessault, 29, should be around to push his teammates for years to come, as he’s under contract through the 2023-24 season at a $5 million annual cap hit.

Contact Ben Gotz at bgotz@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BenSGotz on Twitter.