Knights on Ice — The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

All of these were present last night at T-Mobile and, unfortunately, the 18,419 who were also in attendance had to suffer through the bad and the ugly when the worst team in the league, the L.A. Kings, snapped the VGK’s 8-game win streak with their 4-1 victory. I will save the only good thing about last night till later; it may help you in getting past this debacle.

Now I know that the Kings are not technically the worst team in the league, as that dubious honor belongs to the Detroit Red Wings. But when a Pacific Division opponent comes to T-Mobile, especially L.A., they should in no event get a sniff, especially when the VGK are poised to set a new franchise record of 9 wins in a row against a team that sits at the bottom of the Pacific Division. But they got more than a sniff and the VGK didn’t seem ready to go right from the opening faceoff. And when you consider L.A. played on Saturday night in a game that went to overtime, you would think the start for Vegas would be better.

The Kings came into the game scoring only 160 goals in their 65 games, less than 2.5 goals per game on average. Last night they scored 4 goals on 17 shots. That’s bad, so bad (for the VGK), it’s ugly. But it is consistent when it comes to games between these 2 teams this season. L.A. has beaten the VGK 3 times in their 4 games and in those victories, L.A. scored 5 goals in their 5-2 win on Jan. 9, 4 in their 4-3 win on Nov. 16, and 4 again last night.

Marc-Andre Fleury had a bad night, stopping only 13 of the 17 shots he faced and just like his counterpart Robin Lehner did on Friday night against Buffalo, Fleury was beaten on the very first shot he faced 2:01 into the game by Anze Kopitar. Five minutes and 38 seconds later, Kopitar had his 2^nd goal of the game and his 20^th of the season. Anze is noted more for his defensive abilities than his goal-scoring, but when it gets ugly, Kopitar will get 2 goals before 8 minutes even come off of the clock.

From the opening faceoff, the Kings had a plan: a low-scoring game, 2-1 or maybe even 3-2. They sent only one man inside the blue line and not very deep, and had the other 4 players in the neutral zone, and if Vegas happened to move the puck out of their zone, the Kings pretty much set a wall of 5 players across their blue line. It was going to be the neutral-zone trap, which the NJ Devils made famous 20 years ago.

This zone trap makes for boring hockey. The goal is to force the other team to dump the puck in, rather than skate it in. Dump and chase, dump and chase … who in T-Mobile where the price of seeing a game can be rather expensive wants to see this? Once L.A. got the 2-0 lead, they stopped thinking about offense and the main concern was to just clog up the neutral zone and keep Vegas and their shots from far out.

And when and if the VGK were successful in entering the zone, the Kings for the most part kept the Knights outside the high-danger scoring areas. The VGK had 43 shots on Calvin Peterson and only 3 of the 43 were a second shot off a rebound. The slot for the most part in front of Peterson didn’t require a Zamboni between periods. The VGK rarely got to that prime area.

The Kings had more shots on goal in the first period than they had for the rest of the game with 9, compared to 7 in the 2^nd period and just one shot on Fleury for the entire 3^rd period and Fleury was pulled for an extra skater with 4 minutes left in the game. He did return once the clock got down to under a minute, as there was zero chance that the result of this game was going to change.

When you look at the shots on goal, you might think Vegas got unlucky, firing 43 shots that got to Petersen. What you may not know if you didn’t look at the final stats is that the Kings blocked 24 shots. A number of shots went wide of the net as Vegas had close to 90 shot attempts for the game. Petersen played a whale of a game last night; it was just his 6^th game this season, as Jonathan Quick plays the bulk of the games and Quick played in Saturday night’s OT win.

Kopitar, who scored 2 goals, has been a Knight slayer in 13 games against the VGK with 14 points (6 goals and 8 assists).

Now for the only good thing I found from last night’s game: Nicolas Roy. Roy was acquired in the Haula trade with the Carolina Hurricanes over the summer. He’s been accumulating a ton of frequent-flyer miles between the Chicago Wolves and the VGK. He’s a man without a home, as he’s lived in hotel rooms from training camp till today. He started on the 4^th line when he was first brought up, then was moved to the 3^rd line a few games back. Last night, his play with and without the puck and his passes were clearly noticed by Coach DeBoer, who moved him up to the 2^nd line toward the middle of the game.

DeBoer noted in his post-game presser that he wished he would have moved him up sooner. In my opinion, he was the only bright spot for Vegas on a night that we’ll just have to move on from and learn that no matter who the team is or what their record is or where they are in the standings at this time of the year, no one should be taken for granted.

My 3 Stars of the Game: Nicolas Roy, Nicolas Roy, Nicolas Roy

The next game is tomorrow vs. the NJ Devils at 7 p.m., another team going nowhere. The VGK must learn from last night that no one should be taken for granted.

Your comments and opinions are welcome here at Las Vegas Advisor or you can contact me directly at [email protected] or on Twitter @TheRealJoePane on my Facebook page or the Facebook page of Vegas Hockey Guy