Who doesn’t like a roller coaster? No matter your age, it’s just about everyone’s highlight of the day at an amusement park. Unless you’re a VGK fan, you’re driven completely bonkers with the Space Mountain-type of a rollercoaster that this team seems to be on more often than they should this season.
You see, Space Mountain is almost completely in the dark. You have no clue when the next big dropoff or the next hairpin turn is upon you. Likewise, in this hockey season, you just never know what’s next. Nothing seems to trend one way or another. Nothing makes sense.
You beat the best team in the league on the road, then follow up on that with another road win, only to lose the next three games, setting a home losing streak at five games. I fully understand that there’s parity in the NHL, but inconsistency isn’t parity and the VGK have a bad case of inconsistency.
Last night they lost 3-0 to the Colorado Avalanche, a team that was in the midst of their own six-game home losing streak and a losing overall record at home of 11-12-5. Meanwhile, the VGK were coming off an impressive home win against one of the top teams in the Western Conference, the Nashville Predators, with their backup goaltender Malcolm Subban in nets. Coach Gallant and goaltender Coach David Prior came right back with Subban last night, giving Fleury four days off, and in my opinion, if Vegas had won last night’s game, Subban would have been back in net against his original NHL team, the Boston Bruins, tomorrow night at T-Mobile, which would have given the Flower a very well-deserved seven days off in a row before he faced off against the Winnipeg Jets on Feb. 22.
This team, which prides itself on outworking its opponents, was completely outworked by Tyson Jost. He put on a forechecking clinic when he alone forced Jon Merrill to hastily attempt to push the puck up to Pierre Édouard Bellemare. When Jost stripped the puck from Bellemare and Collin Miller recovered it, Jost took the puck away from Miller and in one swift circular motion, shot it past an unsuspecting Subban, who’d just watched three different teammates possess and lose the puck in a matter of seconds. It was not only the opening score, but ultimately the game-winning goal.
Just another Space Mountain occurrence of not knowing what’s coming next.
We’re now 61 games into this season. There are only 20 games left. This rollercoaster needs to move outdoors, so we can at least somewhat see what lies ahead.
Playing each game with no flow from the last game to the next game is not a good result for the second season. Yes the Pacific Division is so bad that the VGK will most likely slide into the playoffs in the last spot, just ahead of the two Western Conference wildcards, unless Space Mountain completely derails. Vegas leads fourth-place Vancouver by 9 points with Vancouver having one additional game to play. They lead fifth-place Arizona by 11 points with Arizona having 2 additional games to play. The lofty idea of catching San Jose or Calgary, whom they trail by 10 and 11 points, with both teams having additional games to play, may now be out of the question,
We’re all aware that the second season can be full of surprises. We know firsthand, as we had the privilege of being part of four playoff rounds last season. So there’s still hope that this can be turned around. There are just six days until the trading deadline. Will McPhee stand pat? Will he spend some future or current asset to fix what he believes needs to be fixed? We’ve waited this long; there’s no sense in speculating, because only George’s knows.
Speaking of George McPhee, last night’s goaltender Semyon Varlamov, who stopped all 40 shots Vegas mustered, was drafted by McPhee along with the Avalanche’s backup goaltender Philipp Grubauer. Familiar faces for George, who had a lot to do with assembling the 2018 Stanley Cup Champions that crushed the dream of the Knights winning the Stanley Cup in their inaugural season.
A face that McPhee had nothing to do with was Andrew Agozzino, who scored the second goal of the game, his first ever in the NHL. Andrew hadn’t played in the NHL since the 2015-2016 season and had only 3 assists in his 10 NHL games.
Vegas has lost 4 of their last 5 games; they’re 3-8-0 in their last 11. They went 0-4 on the power play and are 3-25 on the power play in their last 10 games.
Hopefully, everyone on the team and all of the fans have used up all of the Space Mountain tickets and we can return to normalcy and lose the inconsistency. It makes things so much easier to understand.
My 3 Stars of the Game: Semyon Varlamov (40 saves on 40 shots), Tyson Jost (a one-man forechecking clinic), and Malcolm Subban (who played well despite giving up 3 goals on 38 shots)
Next game is tomorrow vs. Boston Bruins at 7 p.m. at T-Mobile.
It’s good to be back. I was laid up with a bad case of the flu. Thanks to Deke Castleman for filling in for me on the Nashville game.
Your comments and opinions are welcome and appreciated here at Las Vegas Advisor (to comment, you just have to register on the site, which takes all of 30 seconds and is free, of course). You can also contact me directly at [email protected] or visit my Facebook page, Vegas Hockey Guy.
And for the most comprehensive coverage of the Vegas Golden Knights’ historic inaugural season, take a look at our book Vegas Golden Knights—How a First-Year Expansion Team Healed Las Vegas and Shocked the Hockey World.
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