LAS VEGAS — There are plenty of reasons for Kelly McCrimmon to like Pavel Dorofeyev.Besides being the best homegrown player for a perennial “win-now” franchise that has used scores of prospects to acquire elite players throughout their relatively short history, the Vegas Golden Knights and Dorofeyev had a detailed development plan, and it’s been executed to perfection.Dorofeyev, in his sixth year pro, has scored 72 goals the past two seasons, the most of any Vegas player and is tied for 15th-most in the NHL during that span. And in these playoffs that have taken the Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup Final for the third time, Dorofeyev has the second-most goals in the NHL with 12.This puts him in line for a mammoth payday as a pending restricted free agent this summer. Yet McCrimmon, the Golden Knights general manager, had no problem singing his praises before the series began.“Pavel is a goal scorer,” McCrimmon said of Dorofeyev, the 25-year-old who scored his first two goals of this series in Game 5 and whom the Golden Knights will be relying on Sunday night in hopes of forcing a Game 7. “That’s what our amateur staff saw in him when we drafted him out of Russia. He played in the American Hockey League in Henderson, (Nev.), and I always find (that) with the guys in the American Hockey League early on, you see it in glimpses, and I thought that Pavel really showed that he might be able to do that. He came up and finished the one year, played one playoff game for us (in 2024), and then just really improved.“And for me, I’m a big believer that the playoffs make you better as a player. This playoff has been really good for Pavel, not in terms of only his production, but he’s really playing well. To me, he’s growing as a really good young player. He’s been able to play with some really good players. Our power play was a big part of his production this year, which he was a big part of himself, now playing on the right side of Jack Eichel, who’s a real good player to play with. So he’s made the most of his opportunities, but he really continues to improve, and he is a natural goal scorer.”A few minutes later, after he stepped from behind the podium, McCrimmon was asked about Dorofeyev’s future contract by The Athletic and if he was at all worried about it simply because Vegas doesn’t have a ton of cap space and Dorofeyev is looking at a big pay hike from his expiring $1.835 million in this rising cap world.“We’re in the Stanley Cup Final, and that’s all we’re focused on. We’ll work on that when the season’s over,” said McCrimmon, before adding sarcastically, “I just bragged about the guy. If I was playing that game, I’d have said, ‘Jeez, he’s a tough skater, plays with good players, has been lucky,’ all that nonsense. But, no, I really like the kid and I genuinely meant what I said. I think the playoffs have been really good for him. It’s kind of taken him to a new level.”