Knights on Ice — A Goaltender Problem?

On October 13, Marc-Andre Fleury, the starting goaltender for the VGK, the recipient of several personal awards, and a winner of three Stanley Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins, was injured. Today, more than six weeks later, there’s been no indication of when Fleury will return to the lineup.

On October 21, Fleury’s replacement, Malcolm Subban, was injured.

On October 30, the number-three goalie, Oscar Dansk, also went down to an injury.

That left the fourth stronger, Max Lagace, and a particularly bleak outlook. A fourth-string goaltender playing so early in a season is usually a good indication that you need to just accept the fact that the season might be a very long one. This was especially true for a first-year expansion team that the other 30 NHL teams thought they no longer had any use for.

Even crazier is that Max Lagace’s backup is a 19-year-old on loan from a WHL club who’s never played one minute in the NHL.

So, the VGK had a goaltender problem—or so we thought.

Not only did Subban play well before he was injured, but so did Lagace in filling in for Dansk, who unfortunately never really got a chance to show his skills before becoming the third goalie injured in just 18 days.

Now we know that the real goaltender problem actually lies with for the VGK’s opposing teams. Last night, for example, was the third time in the past four games the Golden Knights have chased the opposing team’s starting goaltender.

Granted, no one had high hopes for this ragtag team in their inaugural season. We were all hoping for a decent showing and praying that Las Vegas would support the NHL’s newest franchise enough to make hockey a success in the desert. We’ve all seen the struggles that the Arizona Coyotes, in another desert location, have faced since they entered the league: multiple ownership changes; poor attendance; lack of support, even from a state that has a very large snowbird population; and constant rumors of the team moving. Heck, there was even a strong rumor that Arizona was the team that would come to Las Vegas.

We have to thank Bill Foley for never giving up on his dream and vision of bringing NHL to Las Vegas. Because just 22 games into a, 82-game season, I will officially declare that the VGK are a success, by any number of yardsticks. They’re in first place in the Western Division. The entire city has bonded with them. And this melting pot collection of players is an apt symbol of the melting pot that Las Vegas has always been.

Unlike their last game against San Jose where the VGK dominated the entire first period, last night was completely opposite. Arizona dominated the entire first period and the beginning of the second. Then this superstar-less team got things back on track and scored three second period goals to lead 3-0.

But they do like to keep things interesting and just like the Friday game vs. San Jose, they let Arizona back into the game with two goals in the third period to close the gap and force the team and the coaching staff to have to scramble to hang on.

Coach Gerard Gallant had this to say in his post-game comments, “We just kept finding a way. We didn’t look good in the third period, but [Malcolm Subban] got some key saves and when the game got tight, we played well.”

With last night’s win, Subban keeps his NHL record undefeated, at 4-0-0. Who says we have a goaltender problem? If you recall, I said after Friday’s game that Coach Gallant had the excuse to put Subban back in the nets. He made 23 saves in his first start since Oct. 21, along with stopping all the shots he faced in the third period on Fridays game. If Subban keeps on playing like this, it’ll be interesting to see what Coach does when Fleury is cleared to play.

Ironically, this is how Fleury lost the starting job in Pittsburgh: He went down to an injury.

Tomas Nosek, William Karlsson, and Erik Haula scored in a span of 1:42 during the second period for Vegas, which is now on a five-game winning streak for the second time this season. Jonathan Marchessault scored an empty-net goal at 19:58 of the third period to close out the scoring.

With tonight’s 4-2 win over Arizona, yet another record was broken, this one only 91 years old. The Vegas Golden Knights became the fastest NHL team to achieve 15 wins in its inaugural season. The original record was held by the NY Rangers in their inaugural season of 1926-1927. It took the Rangers 25 games to reach 15 wins. Our VGK got there on their 22^nd game.

In last night’s game, the VGK scored another power-play goal by Erik Haula and a shorthanded goal by Tomas Nosek, who was inserted into the lineup to replace David Perron, injured in Friday’s game. This next-man-up syndrome seems to be the VGK’s specialty.

William Karlsson continues his incredible scoring pace with his team-leading 13^th goal tonight. In his previous two seasons in the NHL, Karlsson scored a total of 15 goals combined.

The VGK play the Dallas Stars on Tuesday Nov. 28^th at 7 p.m. T-Mobile. Dallas happens to be the team the Vegas Golden Knights beat for their very first win on October 6 in Dallas, which seems like anything but two full months ago. Winning makes the time fly by.