Checking in with Mark Stone

Taking Mark Stone out of the Vegas Golden Knights lineup is arguably as large a blow as this team could absorb. And a look around the NHL will tell one that taking Stone away from his Vegas crew ranks right up near the top in the impact department. He's elite, he's valuable and he's impossible to replace.

So, if and when the NHL season resumes for the Golden Knights, knowing Mark Stone will be at full strength is a massive plus. Injured when the pause began, Stone says he's now close to 100 percent.

Stone is one of the best players in the NHL. He's dangerous in the offensive zone and a prescient defender with one of the quickest and most lethal sticks in the league. Vegas Golden Knights broadcaster and longtime NHL defenseman Shane Hnidy calls Stone "the smartest player in the NHL."

This season, the Winnipeg, Manitoba native has recorded 63 points (21G, 42A). Stone is one of only two players in the NHL who has at least 75 takeaways (78), 60 points (63) & 20 goals (21), joining Auston Matthews (78 takeaways, 80 points, 47 goals).

Stone was dealt to Vegas last season at the trade deadline and despite only being with the club for what amounts to a full season and a bit, he's become synonymous with the organization. He's a superstar in the league's most intriguing market.

The 27-year-old has been social distancing in Vegas since the season stopped and we caught up with him for a chat about hockey, cooking, cycling and whatever else came up.

Here's our catch up with Stone:

Gary Lawless:Last time we saw you, you were hurt. How are you feeling now?
Mark Stone:I'm good. Healing up. Still have a couple little obstacles to get over, but overall in a good spot. Just want to play hockey again.

GL:You've heard all the scenarios; how do you feel about the season resuming?
MS:It's tough right, so many different outcomes and so many different ways you can look at it. Ultimately, the most important thing is which way is the safest. And then you think which way is the fairest to get back playing. I think if you talk to anyone around the league, we are just looking to get some sort of normalcy back in the world. I think sport can do that. It's just a matter of when and where it's safe. We just want to make sure that, not only who is playing, but also staff, family and basically everyone in the world can stay safe if we get back playing.

GL:Give me a day in the life of Mark Stone right now?
MS:The hours have been different, especially with the Vegas weather, just getting used to it. I've been going to bed a lot earlier and waking up earlier, so it's been kind of nice. And playing with the dogs a lot in the back. Trying to stay in as good of shape as I can. There have been some long days and short days but overall just enjoying some time with my fiancée and dogs right now. Making lots of phone calls back home, just trying to keep in touch with everybody.

GL:What's the set up like for you and Hayley?
MS:We have been waking up, she has been doing her workouts and I've been doing mine. Then basically have been hanging by the pool and trying to do some stuff. I've got a hitting net in my backyard, so I've been hitting some golf balls into that. But other than that, we've been laying low. I've been chatting with a lot of the guys and it sounds like they have been doing a lot of the same things, hanging by their pools and enjoying the Vegas weather.

GL:Pete DeBoer said recently that if you guys started again that you, Max (Pacioretty) and Alex (Tuch) would be ready to go when the season resumes, do you concur with that?
MS:Yeah. I don't know exactly the day I got hurt but I think it has been almost 10 weeks now. When I first got injured, I was gunning to be back in four weeks. It's crazy how things can turn but I'm excited to be getting healthy and feeling at a 100 percent.

GL:Who does the cooking, you or Hayley?
MS:We've been barbequing quite a bit and I've been doing that. She will help with whatever else on the inside. Lately she's been dialed in with Joanna Gaines' cookbook and the meals she has been making have been unreal. She made homemade gnocchi a couple days ago. She made a whole chicken recipe, which was awesome. She's learning how to master cooking with this cookbook. It's been awesome.

GL:How do you like to pass time during the day?
MS:Golf. I've got my net and my launch monitor set up in the back right now and have been hitting a crazy amount of golf balls trying to get better, doing some online lessons. Have been watching TV. We have been completely glued in on Sunday nights to "The Last Dance." And have been playing video games and have played a ton with Peyton Krebs actually. We have been playing Call of Duty Warzone with some buddies back home. It passes time pretty quick when you're chatting with the guys and can be pretty competitive. It's been pretty fun.

GL:On the topic of "The Last Dance" and being a competitor yourself, what's it like for you to watch Michael Jordan?
MS:I like to think I'm competitive but after seeing that, not sure if I'm that competitive anymore. You can tell why he's great. I don't know basketball as well as others, but he might not have the best jump shot ever but the fact that he has that crazy competitiveness to him and the will to not take losing for an answer, it's crazy. I wasn't old enough to understand what exactly what the Bulls were doing or the fact that he basically took two seasons off. It's insane to me that from 1991 that he basically didn't lose a championship until he retired in 1998, obviously not counting the Wizards seasons later on. It's the most fascinating thing I've ever really seen in sport. I don't agree with a lot of the things that Jerry Krause did, but you have to give him credit for assembling basically two different teams during those three-peats. He added the right players to compliment, which what he understood he had, which was a superstar.

GL:Has watching "The Last Dance" inspired you to get back to hockey?
MS:I think that show just shows how important sports are to this world. The fact that everybody is so dialed into it and wants to see that coverage, it makes me want to play again but it makes me want to entertain people. As much as I love playing the game and wanting to win so bad, part of what I love doing is entertaining people. I love that people can come and get enjoyment out of watching us go out and compete against each other and compete with my teammates. I don't think there is anything like that on this planet and I think that's why sports are so unique.

GL:You're going through this quarantine in a city you're pretty new to, has this experience made you feel more attached to Vegas?
MS:It didn't take me too long to become attached. I only played 18 games last year during the regular-season and one playoff series. Obviously nervous signing an eight-year extension when you have never played a game for an organization or stepped anywhere off the Strip in Vegas. Going into this season, it made me feel I made the right choice. I never doubted it once but there's always questions, and you never know. Being here for a full year now, feeling comfortable with the city, feeling comfortable with the organization and ultimately feeling comfortable with the people in the city of Las Vegas. This is where I want to be, and this is where I want to finish.

GL:Why did you sign an eight-year deal without ever playing a game here?
MS:Trust. I obviously played for Kelly McCrimmon in Brandon, Manitoba. People who have never stepped foot in a Wheat King locker room or in the city of Brandon, they might not understand how much he loves that team, loves living in that city and running that team. For him to take a job that led to him leaving GM and running that organization, you understood that it was an awesome opportunity and an awesome organization to work for. I do believe that helped me a lot.

GL:What do you miss the most about your job right now?
MS:It's cliché but it's the camaraderie, being with your teammates, your so used to it. I think if you ask any retired player, the two things they miss is: 1. Going to the rink everyday with your best friends and 2. Competing together. Those are the two things I miss the most. There is no other feeling like it and it's hard to replicate.

GL:Flower said he missed us media guys, would you agree?
MS:Well you're part of it so of course. I mean, it's fun, you go to the rink, it's routine. Sometimes it's nice to get out of routine but even in the summer after a hard season, you go away for a month, you think you want three months off, but after a month of recharging you want to get back to it. I mean we can control winning and losing as a team, but we can't control not playing, so it's difficult.

GL:What is something that you usually don't like that even now you wish you could be doing?
MS:There's nothing that I don't love about my job. There's times where I get more frustrated with things but at the end of the day, the fact that I get to play hockey every day, get compensated more than enough to do it, I get to entertain people and compete for what I want to compete for which is the Stanley Cup, there's no better job in the world.

GL:What's the first thing you want to do when this is all over?
MS:Hockey-related, the first thing is probably walk into the rink and have breakfast with the guys and just hang with them. Get there, realize that things are back. We're back playing and the first thing we do every day is go into the rink and have breakfast together. Those are the kind of things that you take for granted. I guess the other thing is I'd love to go to a restaurant or go to a show on the Strip and just enjoy a relaxing evening.

GL:What's your fitness regime like?
MS:It's been different. Have done a lot of different things, tried to incorporate different things to not be so overdone. You don't want to do the same things over and over. I've been trying to use my pool a little bit, I picked up a road bike from Las Vegas Cyclery that I've been riding a little bit, just little things like that that can keep you in shape but you can still have some fun with it because it can get pretty boring lifting weights and running on a treadmill and biking on the Peloton.

GL:Where do you take your road bike?
MS:I've done the backwards loop at Red Rock a couple times, that's the best place to go road biking, just up and down the highway or through the loop. I think the first eight miles of it is downhill and the last eight is uphill, so you're basically just doing it in reverse.

GL:How fast do you go when you're going downhill?
MS:I'm pretty cautious, but I think the fastest I've gotten to is 32 mph. That's conservative, I've ridden with my neighbor who is a triathlete and watching him go down is like, I feel like I'm going 10 mph watching him go down.

GL:Why are you conservative?
MS:I don't know, 40 mph on a road bike is just crazy to me. So, I like to keep it around 20-25.

GL:How much do you miss your family?
MS:Yeah I mean, it's pretty cool when you FaceTime your brother and his kids are growing up. He's spending all his time with them so they're obviously getting better so much quicker at all these activities. Calling my mom and dad, who are kind of just hanging out, they go to the grocery store once a week. This is the most I think I've ever called them, so it's kind of been a bit of a blessing. Obviously, we were hoping if this didn't happen, we would be in the second or third round of the playoffs so I maybe still wouldn't see them anyways. But maybe it's a blessing I've been able to chat with them a little bit more.

GL:What are your dog's names?
MS:Eldrick, Olive and Lu.

GL:Tell me about them.
MS:Eldrick, like Eldrick Woods. He wears a red collar. Olive and Lu are two golden retriever girls. Olive was Hayley's first puppy, which we got in 2016 I believe. So she's about four. She named her, she just liked the name. No rhyme or reason. Lu was Hayley's parents' dog, she didn't get along with one of Hayley's parents' dogs so we took her. Her dad named her after Lucinda Williams, but Lucinda is hard for the dog to pick up so she just goes by Lu. We got Eldrick at a Sens game, there was a rescue that brought some puppies to the game. We always wanted a male dog and we wanted a lab. He looked enough like a lab for us to grab him. Hayley ended up working with the rescue, and they've done an event every year, I think it funded almost the entire shelter for the year so it's pretty cool.

GL:Anything that you're really enjoying about this whole experience?
MS:I mean it's the most I've ever been home. So, spending some time with Hayley and the dogs, it's been really fun actually with the dogs. Throwing the ball in the pool; they've just been swimming all day, it's actually been kind of nice. They go to bed at a decent hour, they wake up at a decent hour now. it's been fun for them to have us home so that's probably the coolest thing I've taken from it. It's just so unfortunate, I haven't enjoyed anything to be honest with you other than just spending time with people.

GL:Is there anything that you're really missing that isn't hockey related?
MS:I just miss going to a restaurant, sitting down, and just ordering a big steak or going to a Mexican restaurant or an Italian restaurant. That's one thing for me, Italian food you can try your best to make it at home it just never tastes as good as an Italian restaurant. So that's probably the main thing I miss the most.