In light of what happened against the L.A. Kings on Saturday and with only one home game before embarking on a week-long road trip, it was imperative to right the ship and not leave town on a downer. The VGK did exactly what was needed by defeating the Dallas Stars by a final score of 4-2 at T-Mobile.
Home ice has been the saving grace of the rocky start to this season. Last night’s win was the 10th in 14 home games, along with extending their home winning streak to five. Their record at T-Mobile is 10-3-1 for 21 of their 35 points, which puts them in a tie for third place with San Jose, trailing second-place Anaheim.
The Ducks won last night, bringing their points to 37. Calgary, currently leading the Pacific with 40 points, lost 1-0 to fifth-place Edmonton last night. Calgary and Edmonton are only separated by six points. The closeness of the Pacific Division has tied the hands of Coach Gallant, who keeps on having to put Fleury in the net just about every night. He did admit post-game that Fleury has been playing so well that he has to continue to go to the Flower game after game. Last season, he had the luxury of leading the Pacific and could afford to give Fleury days off, especially on back-to-back games.
Dallas had been feasting on Pacific Division opponents, with a 9-0-1 record prior to this game. But the Stars came up short on a very determined VGK team that wanted to put the L.A. Kings game in their rear-view mirror as quickly as possible, which they did, having back-to-back games on Saturday and Sunday and with their bounce-back win.
The VGK were awarded a power-play goal with just 28 seconds left in the game, when Reilly Smith scored into an open net as a desperate Dallas team pulled Ben Bishop, even though they were serving out a two-minute penalty for too many men on the ice. The penalty occurred with 1:07 left in the game, when the coaching staff signaled for goaltender Ben Bishop to come to the bench and sent out a sixth skater. The problem: Bishop didn’t leave the net and when the extra forward jumped over the boards, Dallas had too many men on the ice.
The man advantage was good to the Stars last night, as they scored two power-play goals in four attempts. But when Vegas needed to rise to the occasion and kill off a double minor assessed on Shea Theodore for high sticking with just 7:44 left in the game, they bounced back to their potent penalty-killing unit that had 22 straight penalty kills prior to the debacle in L.A. and kept Dallas from tying up the game.
Even though the Knights were credited with the one power-play goal by Smith, they scored two goals seconds (Karlsson’s 10th just three seconds and Tuch’s 10th nine seconds) after their power plays expired. Officially, they’re listed as even-strength goals, but Dallas hadn’t gotten their fifth skater back into the play to make a difference.
Fleury has been the rock and iron man of this team. His 17 wins lead the entire NHL, along with his league-leading five shutouts. He has played in 28 of the Vegas’ 32 games. Coach Gallant sooner than later will have to find a spot in the schedule to give Fleury some much-needed time off and rest.
An important part of last night’s game came in the form of contributions from the line of Ryan Carpenter, Tomas Nosek, and Oscar Lindberg. That line hasn’t added a lot of offense in the first 31 games. Carpenter finally scored a goal last night, his first of the season and his first in his last 41 games. Lindberg has two points (1G, 1A) in his last three games. If this line starts adding some offense, along with the other three lines that have stepped up their offensive contributions in the last 12 games (46 total goals), things will be easier for the team.
My 3 Stars of the Game: Ryan Carpenter (1 goal), William Karlsson (1 goal), Alex Tuch (1 goal).
Paul Stastny, who played in only three games so far this season before being injured, is scheduled to travel with the team. This will pose an interesting problem for Gallant: Does he break up the second line and move Eakin back down to the third? Or does he not tinker with the second line and sit Carpenter, Lindberg, or Nosek? Either way, someone is going up to the press box to make room for Stastny.
The team leaves for New York today and will have three games in NYC without having to travel much; all the arenas are within miles of one another. They close the road trip with back-to-back games on Sunday afternoon Dec. 16 vs. the New York Rangers and Monday against Columbus. The first game of the road trip is on Wednesday against the Islanders followed by a game on Friday against the New Jersey Devils.
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And for the most comprehensive coverage of the Vegas Golden Knights’ historic inaugural season, take a look at our book Vegas Golden Knights—How a First-Year Expansion Team Healed Las Vegas and Shocked the Hockey World.
And here are links to the videos:
Coach Gallant Part I and Part II
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