Knights on Ice — Siegfried and Roy, Copperfield and Pirri

Las Vegas is known for having some of the world’s best illusionists. Siegfried and Roy, who made elephants and tigers disappear right before your eyes, are probably the most famous, though they’re followed closely by David Copperfield, who not only disappeared the Statue of Liberty disappear in New York Harbor, he poofed away a jet plane right on the Las Vegas Strip.

Las Vegas’ newest magical act performs under the name of Brandon Pirri. Pirri makes frozen hockey pucks invisible to opposing goaltenders and before they know it, the puck reappears behind them in the net.

In the four games that Brandon Pirri has appeared in this season, he’s scored four goals and added an assist. In his six games as a VGK, he’s scored an incredible seven goals. The only game in which Pirri didn’t score a goal was the Dec. 23 OT loss to the L.A. Kings.

Last night, the magician made up for that by scoring the winning goal in the Golden Knights 2-1 victory over the Colorado Avalanche at T-Mobile. Pirri also has a scoring percentage of 30; scoring on one out of three shots he takes leads the team.

The mystery of Pirri is the talk of the town. After the Dec. 23 game, he was sent back down to the Chicago Wolves, the American Hockey League (minor-league) affiliate of the VGK; in fact, Pirri leads the entire AHL in goals scored. I immediately received emails and texts from some VGK fans who are somewhat new hockey fans and couldn’t understand why the team would send down a player who right now seems to possess a magical hockey stick.

My explanation to them was the same as in my last blog post: There’s one of two possibilities. One, Pirri was called up to fill in for an injured Max Pacioretty; with Pirri returning to the Chicago Wolves, that could mean Pacioretty is well enough to return to the line-up. Two is to protect Pirri from being claimed by another team off the waiver wire. The VGK need to keep Pirri off the active roster for less than 30 days or no more than 10 games. If they can accomplish either, they can freely move him up and down from the Wolves to the Knights and back without losing him to waivers.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. Pirri has now played in four games and has been on the active roster since Dec. 20. By sending him down after the Kings game on Dec. 23, the team bought an extra three days to keep him under the 30-day waiver limit.

Pirri, as anyone can see, has tremendous offensive talent. He’d be a valuable addition to a few teams in the NHL that currently have trouble scoring goals. Ironically, three teams that haven’t scored more than 100 goals this season all play in the Pacific Division. The Kings have scored 88 goals in 38 games. The Coyotes have scored 94 goals in their 37 games. Anaheim has 97 goals in 39 games. GM George McPhee doesn’t want to lose Pirri, especially to a team in his own division, while getting nothing in return, so he’ll be attempting his own magic act of somehow keeping Pirri around. Goals are important, Pirri has a nose for scoring, and one goal here or there can make a difference.

“Real good,” Coach Gallant said after last night’s game. “Big-time player. He’s scoring goals for us and he’s got the hot stick, so he has to keep it going. I’m real happy he’s playing well and like I said, he puts the pucks to the net and that’s how you score goals.”

To magnify the importance of one goal or more, Arizona has lost 19 games so far this season, 11 of which have been by one goal (including games when an empty-net goal was scored to increase the winning margin to two goals). Anaheim has lost 15 games, of which 10 are by one goal, and of  L.A.’s 20 losses, nine are of the one-goal-margin variety, including empty-net goals. Pirri would be a great addition to these three teams.

It’s not often you hear a coach publicly state a weakness of one of his players, but a few games back, Gallant made a point of saying that though Pirri scores goals, he’s somewhat of a defensive liability. It was strange when I heard him say that in post-game remarks, but now I’m wondering if this might’ve been an attempt to make teams considering picking up Pirri from waivers think long and hard about pulling that trigger.

The Pacific Division is so tight that the top four teams are separated by only 6 points. Calgary leads the division with 49 points, San Jose is second with 47, followed by Vegas with 46 and Anaheim with 43.

Just turn some of those one-goals losses by Arizona, L.A., or Anaheim into a win and the Pacific Division would be a complete rat race from top to bottom. A player like Pirri will be scooped up in a New York minute if he becomes available. This is a problem on the horizon for the VGK.

In last night’s game, Fleury was Fleury, stopping 31 shots of the 32 he faced; it was also his 50th win as a VGK. He was facing Philipp Grubauer, the Washington Capitals’ backup goaltender last year. Grubauer played well also, stopping 41 of the Golden Knights 43 shots.

The Avalanche, who were three for 22 previous power plays, scored just five seconds into their first power play at the 9:42 mark of the first period to gain the 1-0 lead on a goal by J.T. Compher. Birthday boy Paul Stastny scored his third goal of the season just 1:58 later to tie the game. The game remained tied until magic man Brandon Pirri scored on a shot from just inside the blue line for the game winner.

But it wasn’t an easy win, as the Avalanche had two power-play opportunities in the final six minutes, along with pulling Grubauer for an extra skater in the final minute. The VGK held off the potent offense and finally played a complete 60-minute effort to keep their home point streak alive at nine games with a 7-0-2 record at T-Mobile.

“Yeah, big difference,” Gallant said on last night’s effort compared to the last two overtime losses. “In the two other games, it didn’t look like we had very much energy. We looked like we were behind the play. Tonight was a different story. We had three good days off and I actually thought the game was better played than I expected. I thought we played really fast and really good and we had control of the game for the most part.”

My 3 Stars of the Game: Paul Stastky (1 goal, 1 assist on Pirri’s winning goal), Brandon Pirri (game winner), Marc-André Fleury (31 saves on 32 shots).

Next game is Saturday Dec. 29 vs. the L.A. Kings at 1 p.m.

Your comments and opinions are welcome here at Las Vegas Advisor or you can contact me directly at[email protected]Or visit my Facebook page Vegas Hockey Guy

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.