Post-game, Coach Gallant was asked what he could take from this two-game road trip. He said, “Not much,” though he later added, “We win as a team and we lose as a team.”
With last night’s 5-3 loss to the St. Louis Blues, the VGK have now lost two games in a row and four of their last five games, which brings their record to 5-7-1 after 13 games.
When you think of “not much,” St. Louis player Oskar Sundqvist comes to mind. In the 72 games in his NHL career, Oskar has scored only two goals. But last night, he equaled his entire NHL goal production and on his second goal, he put the Blues ahead 3-2, a lead they never surrendered.
St Louis hadn’t played a game in five days. You’d think it would or should have taken them a little time to get their legs under them, but it seemed the time off had a positive effect. They had six shots on Fleury, before Vegas registered even one. Eventually, Vegas picked up on offense and had seven of the next eight shots. The first period ended with the score tied 1-1 and the shots tied at 9.
Vegas battled back twice in the game to tie the score. The first time, Bellemare scored unassisted to tie it up at 1-1, then Haula scored just 23 seconds after St. Louis’ Vladlmir Tarasenko put St. Louis ahead 2-1 early in the second period. Haula tipped in a shot from the point by Shea Theodore that tied the score 2-2.
The second period was the ultimate downfall: Vegas surrendered three goals due to turnovers and putting the Blues on the power play. You never want to put St. Louis on their potent power play. They scored eight seconds in, on the first shot.
The VGK failed to get the puck deep numerous times, so our team was on their heels, playing from behind and chasing the game for most of the second period. The score after going into the third was 4-2 and so far this year, Vegas is 1-6 when entering the final period trailing.
With the Blues scoring five goals, you might think that Fleury had a bad game. But it was just the opposite. On the Blues’ first four goals: McNabb lost his coverage on Sundqvist at the half wall and he walked in alone on Fleury; on the power goal, Tarasenko was left alone to Fleury’s right and he had an easy tap-in once he stopped the cross-ice shot/pass with his skate; then, when Theodore turned the puck over trying to enter the Blues zone, it turned into an odd-man rush that again left Sundqvist alone facing Fleury; and the Blues fourth goal was scored by defenseman Colton Parayko after William Karlsson fell down in front of Fleury and the other four VGK over-committed to the strong side, leaving the weak side open to a cross-ice pass and a shot from Parayko.
Coming into the game, St. Louis was ranked 29th in goals allowed. Vegas was 30th in goals scored (scoring only two goals or less in nine of their 13 games, with a total of 30 goals in 13 games). So would this be a game where Vegas would score more than their usual two goals per game? Vegas did score more than two goals and even had a power-play goal by Alex Tuch at 9:01 of the third period off of a mad scramble in the crease, when Jonathan Marchessault slid the puck out from behind the net, closing the Blues’ lead to 4-3.
The Blues added a fifth goal to regain their two-goal lead. Gallant pulled Fleury for a sixth skater with 3:01 left in the game.
Even though the VGK have scored a power play goal in the last four games, they still have the worst power-play percentage among the 31 teams at 12.2%. This is a huge difference from last year’s 21.4%.
Jonathan Marchessault continues his scoring touch. With his primary assist on Tuch’s PPG, he now has 4 goals and 3 assists in the last 7 games.
My 3 Stars of the Game: Oskar Sundqvist (2 goals), Robert Thomas (2 assists), Alex Tuch (1 goal, 1 assist, 6 shots).
After the game, Gallant said, “We had some good moments tonight. Then again, we ended up losing the hockey game. But it’s a group thing. That’s the way we are as a team and we’ve got to get better. Everybody’s got to get better.”
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare said, “It was not a complete game and it ended up costing us big time. We’re going to have to figure out how to play a full sixty minutes, because forty is nowhere near close enough.”
The VGK’s next game is tomorrow evening against the Carolina Hurricanes at T-Mobile at 7 p.m.
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