I’ve never understood NHL games being played in the afternoon, or in this case for the VGK, 10 a.m. Pacific time. Hockey players are highly conditioned athletes who have game-day routines.
On a normal game day, players have a morning skate. This allows them to check the equipment they’ll use for the game. It also allows them to check the texture of the boards that are different in every arena; passes off the boards are key components of breaking out of the zone and getting the puck to teammates in the offensive zone. These skates are followed by an afternoon nap, then a team meal. These are normal routines every player is comfortable with.
Today’s early start was approximately six hours earlier than normal. There was none of the above for either team, and Vegas’ body clocks were off by nine hours.
Not only isn’t this fair to the players, it’s really unfair to the fans in attendance. If you haven’t noticed attending a hockey game is not an inexpensive day out. So subjecting the fans to watch these games when the players may not be performing at their peak level is wrong. There were several matinee games today in the NHL and I believe it was because of March Madness. The league makes adjustments for the Super Bowl, but that’s a one-day event. March Madness goes on for a few weeks.
In the first 20-minute period, there were 35 stoppages of play. That’s a stoppage every 57 seconds. That’s a boring hockey game to subject fans to watch and horrible for players who are subject to these early starts.
Today’s game went 40 minutes without a goal. This is a league that has adjusted rules to try to create more offense. To create more action, essential for the good of the game, why not just keep the games for the most part starting at a time the players are comfortable with?
End of sermon, on to the game.
The only player on either team who seemed to have any energy in the first period was Alex Tuch. That made sense; it was a homecoming for him as he played a lot of his amateur hockey in the Syracuse/Buffalo area and had 450 family and friends in attendance. He said he was looking forward to this game since October. He didn’t need any incentive to be ready to go. Tuch took 4 of Vegas’ 11 shots in the first period.
The other 39 players couldn’t say the same. The longer the game went on with no score, the more dangerous the Buffalo Sabres became. Buffalo is the 30th-ranked team in the entire league, with one of the lowest goal productions. Vegas didn’t even register a shot on goal in the last 6:39 of the first period and no shots in the last 7:31 of the second period. They were working off of a cold cup of coffee for the first two periods and most of the third.
Fleury was once again in nets for the VGK and it seems like Fleury will be the starter until Subban returns from the IR. His record coming into today’s game was 23-9-3 with a 2.19 GAA and a .928 save percentage.
Fleury once again saved the day for his team, stopping 31 of Buffalo’s 32 shots in regulation play. Fleury had an impressive record in Buffalo over the years that he played for the Penguins. His record is 10-1-2 and the last time he was the losing goaltender in Buffalo was way back on 12/29/2009.
When asked about Fleury, Coach Gerard Gallant said, “[Fleury] was great. He was the key for us getting the chance to have some opportunity to win the hockey game today.”
Vegas was lucky to win today’s game as they just didn’t seem to have the energy to play all 60 minutes. With less than five minutes left in the game and Buffalo leading 1-0, they needed someone to step up. Well, who better than Deryk Engelland, one of the veterans and leaders of this team? It was somewhat of a lucky goal. Engelland swept behind the net and was attempting to pass to William Karlsson in front of the net when the puck was deflected off Sabres defenseman Marco Scandella, who actually made a good play in preventing the pass from coming across the crease. Unfortunately, it bounced off his stick, his knee, and his leg before crossing the goal line to tie the game and send it into overtime.
Post-game Engelland had this to say about his goal. “I was just trying to hold onto the puck more or less. [Lehner] poked it and it stayed on my stick, so I was just trying to get to the net. I saw [William] Karlsson there and tried to pass it to him, but [Scandella] dove and it ended up going in off of him.”
The last time these two teams played was back in October and that game also wound up in overtime, with Erik Haula scoring to win the game 5-4 after Vegas blew a 4-1 lead.
Today’s shootout took five rounds to determine the winner and lo and behold, Erik Haula had the winning goal in the shootout.
As I mentioned in my previous blog, Tomas Tatar didn’t look comfortable playing on the top line with Karlsson and Marchessault and halfway through the game, Coach Gallant replaced him with David Perron. They remained together for the rest of the game. Perron seemed to work well with the first line.
Tatar was dropped down to the line with Haula and Hyka.
Buffalo’s only goal came when Shea Theodore made the mistake of attempting to make a pass across the blue line. Unless you’re 110% sure you can get it across without it being intercepted, this is a play you shouldn’t make. Often the defending forward is moving forward and the player receiving the pass is flat-footed, and that’s exactly what happened as Benoit Pouilet broke in on Fleury on a 2-1 and passed it off to Justin Bailey who made a nice forehand-to-backhand move to open the scoring that appeared that it might be the only goal Buffalo would need today.
Want to know how lucky and spoiled you are to be a VGK fan? With today’s win, our team broke yet another NHL expansion-team record with the most road wins (20) in the inaugural year. The 1993-1994 Anaheim Ducks held that record for the last 24 years.
But what really makes this team’s accomplishments so amazing is that the Buffalo Sabres over the last five seasons have only 134 wins total—an average of 26 wins for the entire season. Vegas has 44 wins so far and 20 wins on the road with 14 games still to be played. Buffalo has averaged only 2.18 goals per game, last in the NHL. They have a -0.80 goal differential and -2.71 even strength goals differential, both of which are also last in the league. The VGK are spoiling all of their fans, but no one is complaining.
Vegas leads the league with four players having 60 points or more.
VGK goal scorer: Engelland (5).
The VGK’s next game concludes this five-game road trip. It’s on Monday in Philadelphia vs. the Flyers at 4 p.m. Pacific time.
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