[Editor’s Note: Joe Pane is unavailable to post his blog this morning, so this is a brief recap of last night’s game.]
Last nights’ game was a shot fest for the Golden Knights, who registered 50 shots on goal in their 5-1 win against the Nashville Predators.
Of the game’s 18 VGK skaters, so many of them took so many shots that it’s easier to name the ones who didn’t: William Karlsson, Paul Stastny, and Brayden McNabb.
Now for the ones who did. Max Pacioretty took nine and scored twice (his 17th and 18th); Alex Tuck took six and had two assists; Oscar Lindberg took five and scored once (his fourth); and Reilly Smith took five and had an assist.
It was such a shooting match that among them, Knights defensemen had 12 shots on goal, with Nate Schmidt and Shea Theodore logging four apiece; Theodore scored a goal (his ninth).
Brandon Pirri took two and scored one (his 10th).
The VGK were one for three on the power-play and the penalty-kill unit blanked the Predators on their three PP.
Perhaps best of all, Malcolm Subban was in net; he stopped 29 of the 30 shots he faced and was one of AT&T Sports Net’s three stars of the game, along with Oscar Lindberg and Max Pacioretty.
“I thought our second period was probably the best all year,” declared Coach Gallant after the game. “They were jumping, forechecking hard, and they had a lot of great scoring chances.”
Malcolm Subban was obviously happy with his game (playing against his brother P.K.). “It felt good to get back in there. When you don’t play for a while, you never know how it’s going to go,” he said, referring to coming off Injured Reserve just last week. “I just took it one shot at a time and before you know it, we’ve gone through a period or two.”
And Max Pacioretty had nothing but good things to say about Oscar Lindberg, with whom he was playing for the first time, along with Cody Eakin. “He’s a really good ballplayer, something you don’t notice until you play with him. Always making that right play on the wall and making it easy coming out of our end. He was very effective tonight. He made life pretty easy on me and Cody and we want to build off that.”
This was a big win for the home team, against the number-two team in the Central Division of the Western Conference, with 73 points. The Knights are still solidly in third in the Pacific with 68, nine behind the Calgary Flames and San Jose Sharks.
The next game is tomorrow evening against the Avalanche in Colorado at 7 p.m. Pacific Time.
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