Knights on Ice — A Good Feeling Falls One Point Short

“It’s a good feeling. We had a real good road trip,” Vegas Golden Knights Coach Gerard Gallant said. “If we keep playing like this, we’re going to win a lot of hockey games.”

Yes they are, but last night’s game ended with mixed emotions when the New York Islanders beat the VGK in overtime by a final score of 3-2. Vegas did earn one point and will fly back to Vegas having picked up 5 points out of a possible 6. They beat the 2 teams they were supposed to beat: the Rangers and Devils.

The Islanders were a bigger hill to climb. They had an 18-6-2 record coming into last night’s game and with the OT win are 11-0-1 in the last 12 games at home. Vegas came back twice to tie the game, with goals by Alex Tuch in the 2^nd period and Jonathan Marchessault with just 4:32 remaining. Tuch’s was his 4^th goal in the last 4 games to go along with 3 assists and Marchessault’s tying goal was his 4^th  in the last 2 games along with 2 assists in his last 4 games. Malcolm Subban, who has played the last 6 games while Fleury was away, came up with another strong performance, stopping 28 of the 31 shots he faces; unfortunately, it fell just a tad short.

The VGK played well, but the Islanders played better. Matthew Barzal seemed to have the puck glued to his stick for what seemed like the entire 3:10 of the OT before he was tripped by Marchessault attempting to track him down out by the blue line with the puck. Marchessault went to the box for the tripping penalty.

With the faceoff to Subban’s right, Gallant sent out William Karlsson to take the faceoff, along with Deryk Engelland and Brayden McNabb, the 2 defensemen he uses on the penalty kill. With the Islanders’ 4-on-3 man advantage, Josh Bailey won the faceoff, but Karlsson made a nice recovery and sent the puck toward the boards, hoping to recover it and clear it out of the zone. The puck didn’t cooperate and went backwards toward the corner. Somehow all 3 Vegas players wound up in the corner with 3 of the Islanders and no VGK player in front of the net. That left Ryan Pulock alone in the high slot. When the players exited the corner, Brayden McNabb came out of the scrum without his stick. Anders Lee recovered the loose puck and pushed it toward Pulock, alone and moving toward Subban. Pulock snapped his shot past Subban’s stick and blocker for the winning goal that snapped the VGK’s 4-game win streak, but kept the point streak at 5 games with at least a point.

Their resurgence over their last 5 games has vaulted Vegas into 3^rd place in the Pacific Division, just 2 points behind Edmonton, which has 1 game in hand, and is 3 points ahead of 4^th place Vancouver, which has games in hand on Vegas.

It should be noted that Max Pacioretty, who is not shy about shooting the puck, had a rare game without a shot on net. Jonathan Marchessault and Shea Theodore both had 5 SOG, which led both teams.

That Pacioretty took no shots is an indication of the defensive style that the Islanders now play under Barry Trotz. He used the same clogging of the neutral zone, forcing the VGK to have to dump and chase the puck, as opposed to skating it in, as he did in the Stanley Cup Final. It worked in June 2018 and it worked once again in December of 2019.

There were 54 giveaways between the 2 teams in a playoff-type game with not much room to maneuver. Vegas had 23 GVA, while the Islanders had 31.

The Islanders took the physical part of the game to an extreme and had 39 hits to Vegas’ 13.

Matt Martin and Ross Johnston had 7 hits each, while the normal hit squad of Reaves and Carrier had only 2 each. It’s not often that these 2 players aren’t the hit leaders of a game. Could the 3^rd game in 4 nights, plus the 2,500-mile road trip, have left them short on energy?

Carrier was moved back to the 4^th line, while the VGK’s newest player, Chandler Stephenson, switched spots with Carrier and was playing with Tuch and Glass.

Islander goaltender Semyon Varlamov was good, stopping 31 shots of the 33 he faced. He’s given up only 3 goals on the last 94 shots he’s faced.

“Even with this loss, I still look at [the trip] as successful. We still got a point, we got five out of six points on the road. The Islanders are a really good team right now, they’ve been playing really well. It was a little bit different style. It wasn’t just back and forth, it was a lot more possession in each zone. You had to bear down in the defensive zone and you try to bury your chances and get as many pucks and bodies to the net in the offensive zone. It was a little bit more of a muck-and-grind kind of game. Honestly, there was a lot of physicality. It was almost like a playoff hockey game out there.” — Golden Knights forward Alex Tuch

My 3 Stars of the Game: Matthew Barzal (who didn’t register a point, but controlled the entire OT and drew the penalty that decided the game), Ryan Pulock (GWG in OT), Alex Tuch (1 G and playing his best hockey over the last 4 games with 4G and 3A)

The next game is Sunday vs. the New York Rangers at T-Mobile at 4 p.m.

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