Last night, Marc André Fleury recorded his league-leading 29th win of the season in his 48th game played in the VGK 4-3 win over Detroit.
Last season, the Flower had 29 wins for the entire season when he played in just 46 games due to an injury suffered against the same Detroit Red Wings on Friday Oct. 13, 2017, at T-Mobile.
In last night’s game, Fleury saved the VGK, who pretty much decided that playing 60 minutes was not in their game plan. They left Fleury all by himself for the entire first period. One turnover after another handed Detroit ample scoring chances with their 14 shots on net just in the first period.
The lone goal scored in the first period by Detroit was the result of the referee being in the perfect spot to see that the backhand shot by Justin Abdelkader was saved by Fleury, but was sitting between his pads and not covered up. If you watch the replay of this goal, you’ll see the ref put the whistle in his mouth to blow the play dead. If the ref had been anywhere else, he would have done just that, as the puck was no longer in sight for anyone other than the official — and Gustav Nyquist. Nyquist was behind the net off of Fleury’s left shoulder when he swooped in and with one quick motion took the loose puck and slid it backwards across the goal line before the intended whistle was blown. The only reason that only one goal was scored in the first period was because of Fleury, who was once again outstanding, with 36 saves on the Red Wings’ 39 shots.
It’s not often that you can only play 40 minutes of a 60-minute hockey game in the NHL and register a win. The VGK dodged a bullet last night and salvaged their four-game road trip with this win for a 2-2 record. They were credited with seven shots on net in the first period, but three of them came within 26 seconds of play. The other 19 minutes and 34 seconds, the VGK mustered only four. Detroit’s goaltender Jimmy Howard had an easy first period. Howard stopped 24 of 27 shots at even strength and 4 of 5 on the VGK’s two power-play chances.
Howard might not have broken a sweat in the first period with the shortage of offensive zone play for Vegas, but in the second period, the VGK underwent a complete transformation. One can only imagine what Gallant had to say to the boys between the first and the second periods.
One of the things he implemented was reuniting Karlsson, Marchessault, and Smith and did he ever push the right button on this. These three haven’t seemed to produce the same magic this season as they did last season. Thus, the line was disbanded and Gallant ran a number of players in Reilly Smith’s spot before and after Smith’s injury. The latest Smith fill-in was Valentin Zykov, while Smith was sent to the third line to play with Eakin and Pirri upon his return from the IR. Last night, Pirri was a healthy scratch and was replaced by Oscar Lindberg. Ryan Carpenter didn’t play after hitting his head against the boards in the Tampa Bay game. He was replaced by Tomas Nosek.
“I didn’t like our first period, but the second period was a lot better and the third was good too,” Coach Gallant said. “This road trip got off to a bad start, but we started playing the way we are capable of playing.”
After the dismal offensive effort of Vegas in the first period, Gallant went back to what played a major part of their offensive success last season. By the looks of what transpired, Bill, Jonathan, and Reilly want to stay reunited. They put on a surge of offense that resulted in three goals in the second period to blow the game wide open. Marchessault wound up with two goals on four shots on net, including a power-play goal. Karlsson wound up with one goal and one assist on three shots. Reilly Smith had the primary assist on Marchessault’s second goal. Last night’s performance by these three looked a lot like how they just blew by teams last year and wound up with the overall best +/- rating in the entire NHL.
“It was a matter of time before I was going to put them back together. They play well together and tonight they really had some jump and scored some goals. It was nice to see,” Gallant said.
Detroit did close the Vegas lead with a third-period goal at the 4:40 mark by their rookie sensation Michael Rasmussen to close the lead to 3-2. Vegas responded with the game-winning goal by Brayden McNabb, his second of the season to increase the lead back to 4-2 with 8:54 left. Detroit scored a meaningless goal with just three seconds left to make the final score 4-3.
My 3 Stars of The Game: Jonathan Marchessault (2 goals, including a PPG), William Karlsson (1 goal, 1 assist), Marc-Andre Fleury (36 saves on 39 shots and his NHL leading 29th win)
The next game is at T-Mobile on Saturday at 7 p.m. vs. Columbus Blue Jackets.
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Good write-up. We, too, we amazed at the difference between the first and second periods. It looked like VGK had jet–lag or something in the first, they were sloppy and had no offense. For that matter, DET was sloppy too, but managed to get out of that funk sooner than Vegas did. Our seats were right behind the Vegas goal 1st/3rd and we saw that puck lying there under Fleury as well and knew trouble was coming. But he did make some great saves all game long and certainly was the reason the Knights won this one.
This was a very weird game for the wife and I. As a native Detroiter, the Red Wings have always been my team. And always will be. However, Vegas is basically my second home (and we lived there for a short time in the late 90’s) and the Knights are my adopted second team. It’s nice to have two teams I can root for, especially while the Wings are in rebuilding mode. They had a great run for 20+ years and 4 cups. While it hurts to root against the Wings, I am a realist and know they have no chance at the playoffs – they are 3rd from bottom in the overall standings after all. So, Go Knights Go!