In Wednesday’s loss to the Anaheim Ducks, the VGK lost despite scoring 2 power-play goals and 2 shorthanded goals. Last night the VGK scored only 1 PPG and 1 SHG on the way to a dominating performance, beating the Arizona Coyotes 7-1.
The onslaught started with the patience of Nicolas Roy and Jonathan Marchessault on a 2-on-1 rush against Arizona goaltender Karel Vejmalka, who was playing in only his 13th NHL start. Roy broke into the Arizona zone with Marchessault on his right and Roy dragged the puck around defenseman Kyle Capobianco, who dropped to the ice to prevent Roy from passing the puck. Roy let Capobianco slide himself completely out of the play. Then Vejmalka overcommitted to his left toward Marchessault, who now had the puck on the blade of his right-handed stick. Marchessault’s patience allowed him to let Vejmalka to continue toward his left as he switched from his forehand to his backhand in one smooth motion and had a completely wide-open net for the first of the 7 goals.
It was a complete team win last night; 14 of the 18 VGK scored at least 1 point and six players had multi-point games. Last night was the 2nd time Vegas has scored 7 goals in a game this season. They also scored 7 vs. Vancouver on Nov 13 at T-Mobile in their 7-4 victory. The franchise record is 8, which they scored against the Chicago Blackhawks in Chicago on Nov 27 in their 8-3 win. So as not to be accused of bias reporting, the VGK did lose to the NJ Devils by a score of 8-3 on March 14, 2018.
The one and only miscue for the VGK resulted in Arizona also cashing in on a 2-on-1 with only Nic Hague back on defense. Travis Boyd’s goal was the only one Laurent Brossoit gave up on the 30 shots he faced in relief of Robin Lehner who had the night off.
The VGK special teams over the last 2 games are firing on all cylinders and if they’re to be successful this season, that trend will have to continue. Max Pacioretty, who recently returned from a fractured foot, seems to have found his comfort zone. His PPG was an identical goal from the one he scored on Wednesday vs. Anaheim, even to the point that Mark Stone was in the same spot in front of the net. This time, Stone actually moved out of the way of the shot, but it was such a rocket that Vejmalka never had a chance to save it.
Pacioretty has six points (three goals, three assists) in his past four games. His 2 goals last night gave him his 56th multi-goal game since entering the NHL in 2008-09, ranking fourth behind Alex Ovechkin (122), Steven Stamkos (80), Sidney Crosby (66), and Joe Pavelski (57). He’s part of a pretty illustrious group. Kind of makes you forget we had to give up Nick Suzuki, now a rising star in Montreal, to bring Patches here. But we did also unload the Tomas Tatar contract in that same trade. Tatar didn’t last long in Montreal and is currently treading water with the Devils. Since leaving Vegas, Tatar has scored 62 goals in 220 games with Montreal and New Jersey; Suzuki has scored 65 goals in 152 games with Montreal. Pacioretty has scored 83 goals for the VGK in 191 games. So if you put Tatar and Suzuki’s goals and games played together, they average .35 goals per game between them, while Pacioretty averages .44 goals per game with the VGK. Maybe that will ease the pain of watching Suzuki flourish in Montreal.
Other game notes and quotes. The VGK had 4 SHG last season in 56 games; so far this season just 23 games in, Vegas has a league-leading 6 SHG.
“We want to win that special teams battle every night,” DeBoer said post-game. “If our penalty killing can shut them down and we can chip in a power-play goal here and there, it makes a big difference.”
He added, “We needed a win. You look at the standings, you lose a couple in a row and all of a sudden there’s teams climbing over you. We talked about not digging ourselves a hole early in games like we have been lately, and I thought we did that better tonight.”
The Coyotes allowed five goals or more for the 10th time in 24 games.
The Golden Knights are 15-6-0 against the Coyotes since joining the NHL in 2017-18.
My 3 Stars of The Game: Max Pacioretty (2G, including the GWG, along with 6 SOG), Nicolas Roy (1G, 1A), Evgenii Dadonov (1G, 1A)
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Lynda Israel sent this gracious comment in.
This caps off the game for me. Thanks.
Lynda Israel, is this like the “Night” cap you get when the bartender yells “last Call”?
Joe P.
Does Washington have re-Caps? 😎
Can Joe do a re-cop? 👮♂️😉
Sorry, my jokes are as bad as Chychrun´s turnovers last night.
Couldn´t see the game but I watched the goals and read the statistics on NHL.com.
Hey Joe. Thanks for the recap!
Was Arizona as bad as the result of the game says?
Looking at the goals only, Vegas seems to have played with a flow.
The rookie in the Arizona goal let in one goal against LA and kept a clean sheet against the Jets in the games prior to this game.
Their best defender, Chychrun, made a lot of turnovers and giveaways, and that didn´t make life easier for Vejmalka in goal.
VGK are three points after the Sharks in third place, but we have two games in hand of them.
Talking about Tatar, I said directly when he came to Vegas that hopfully he won´t last long. I´d heard that he had made himself impossible in Detroit, but that can have something to do with contract talks. Maybe it was just rumors.
However, I didn´t see any chemistry between him and his linemates. VGK was built by playing as a team and maybe the north-south checking hockey wasn´t his cup of tea. Gallant made the team drink a lot of that tea.
You sometimes see if a player will fit in with the team or not. Well, he´s gone and almost forgotten by all the goals of Patchy.
Maybe you can ask Eddie about the rumors of Tatar and Detroit before he came to Vegas?
Detroit had high hopes for him, at least the fans.
Maybe Larkin took over as the young player to build on? I saw him score his first goal in his first NHL-game playing on the same line as Zetterberg. Now he´s the captain of the Wings and it´s his turn to be a mentor of a young player.
Lucas Raymond would have been great to have in the Golden Knights. Patchy could have learned him a few tricks to score even more goals than Raymond have done so far.
Are there any pure scorers in Henderson or in the junior leagues?
Kenneth
Tatar never seem to fit in with the system Gallant was using and he seemed to fall out of favor within the organization in his short time here. As far as pure scorers go with all of the injuries this season so far, a lot of the players who would be developing with the Henderson Silver Knights have been forced into action with the big club without much developing time. But there is one player who has not been called up who potentially has a lot of upside for the future with the VGK and that is Jack Quinn. In 17 games so far this season with the HSK Quinn has 11G -13A for 24 points. When everyone returns to 100% Quinn may not see the ice for Vegas until next year where entry level contracts will be needed to fill the roster to allow for all of the big contracts that VGK now have signed.
Joe P.
His name is a mix of the Hughes brothers forenames. If it´s a mix of their talent in him as well, there´s high hopes for Jack.
I´m gonna check him up tomorrow. There must be a some articles and videos about him on the internet.
Good night from Stockholm, it´s half past three in the morning.
Thank´s for the info Joe!
Mary Becker sent this comment in
Nice article. You mention the loss in New Jersey in 2018. I was at that game I thought we had that game won and all the sudden don’t know what the heck happened. So glad that hasn’t happened to us again and I hope it won’t ever
Mary Becker I was there also it was a tough pill to swallow. If my memory is correct NJ scored the first 4 goals and Vegas only came within 2 before NJ finished them off.
Joe P.