Knights on Ice — A Knight-Style Hangover

In the now-famous movie Hangover, a group of guys venture to Vegas and after a night of debauchery and mayhem, they wake up to find a tiger in their room.

Well, the Chicago Blackhawks spent three days in Las Vegas before their game on Tuesday night and though they didn’t find a tiger in their room, but they did find Knights, who can make anyone feel like they have a hangover.

We all know that Las Vegas has a way of distracting even the most focused. And that’s exactly what happened when the Blackhawks “sat at the oval table.” No, the Vegas Golden Knights don’t have a round table; it’s oval: 200 feet long and 85 feet wide with two blue lines and one red line dividing it. Once again, the VGK prevailed, beating Chicago 4-2 to achieve a record of 7-1 and second place in Pacific Division of the National Hockey League.

Remember, this is a team that was put together from a list of players that the 30 established teams believed they could afford to expose in the expansion draft.

On Tuesday night, these 20 castoffs were pitted against a team that over the last 7-1/2 years has won three Stanley Cups and has a core of players (Brent Seabrook, Keith Duncan, Jonathan Towes, Patrick Kane, Corey Crawford) who have played together for 8 to 13 years—an astonishing 3,717 games combined among them!

The VGK have played eight games together.

In addition, since the 2014-2015 season, Patrick Kane has registered 270 points, the most points of any player in the league.

So it wasn’t going to be easy. Everyone thought so, including  the oddsmakers here in Las Vegas, who are pretty good at setting a line. They had Chicago as a strong favorite, despite the VGK impressive start and Chicago was the road team. The oddsmakers don’t seem to be giving the VGK the credit they deserve.

Have a look at the past expansion teams records for the first seven games:

LA Kings (1967-1968): 3-2-2

Philadelphia Flyers (1967-1968): 2-2-3

Tampa Bay Lightning (1992-1993): 3-3-1

Florida Panthers (1993-1994): 2-2-3

Vegas Golden Knights (2017-2018): 6-1-0 (and you can make that 7-1-0 after Tuesday’s game)

T-Mobile Arena was once again full and the energy was evident even before the game started. A large contingent of Chicago Blackhawk fans were in attendance and their red home sweaters were all over the arena.

A few teams travel well in the NHL, which means their fans show up at away games in large numbers. Chicago is one of them, along with the other original five NHL teams: NY, Toronto, Boston, Detroit, and Montreal. Hockey is a family sport. Your grandfather, and maybe even your great-grandfather if you’re old enough, were the first fans of the original NHL teams. Since your dad followed, you really have no choice but to do the same, and so do your own kids. This makes Christmas shopping easy! I always receive multiple gifts from my brother and nieces and I can tell you that there’s always at least one NY Rangers-related package.

So expect this contingent of fans whenever one of these six teams comes to town. And can you blame them? They have a choice of games to travel to, including Ohio, Minnesota, and Alberta. Now don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against going to any destination, but you add Las Vegas into the mix and which would you rather go to?

I have a number of friends here in town who are from Chicago and when they first heard I had season tickets they were blowing up my phone to be first in line to remove these tickets from me.

Last night the Chicago fans had a limited amount of time to cheer. They scored within the first 3 minutes and 30 seconds of the game and that was that. VGK scored the next four goals, before Patrick Kane’s goal with just over a minute left in the game.

Some interesting facts:

Scoring the first goal in a game is paramount to a team’s success. NHL stats show teams that score the first goal win 68% of the time. Going into the Chicago game, the VGK were 4-1 when the other team scored the first goal. You can now make that 5-1.

Usually, when a team surrenders a short-handed goal like VGK did on Tuesday night, it has an effect on a team’s mindset. Well, the only effect it had was scoring a goal 26 seconds later. They added a second goal 1 minute and 47 seconds after that. This team doesn’t flinch.

Three different goaltenders have recorded VGK’s first seven wins. I don’t know this for a fact, but that has to be some sort of record in the entire 100 years the NHL has been around. I’ll see if I can find this out.

Another interesting fact: Coming into this game, 20 of the 21 VGK players had registered one point or more. What you’re seeing is a complete team effort as constructed by GM George McPhee and designed by coach Gallant. The season is certainly young, but both McPhee and Gallant are early favorites as candidates for the GM and coach of the 2017-2018 season.

Here in Vegas, fans have the opportunity to develop the family support of the VGK with your grandfather and dad and your kids all together, rather than having the tradition past down from generation to generation. Don’t let this Golden (Knights) opportunity pass you by.

Friday’s game against the Colorado Avalanche closes out this so-far successful home stand. Friday is also Nevada Day, so the game will start at 3 p.m. Schools will be closed. Expect to see granddads, dads, and kids there, creating a family tradition that will last lifetimes.