Knights on Ice — Embarrassing

 Yes, that’s exactly what it was, but no one wanted to say it, until Coach Gallant himself used the word to describe the Vegas Golden Knights’ 6-1 defeat at the hands of the Colorado Avalanche. The only thing the 18,420 in attendance in this afternoon matinee to celebrate Nevada Day could stand and cheer for was the video tribute that the VGK organization showed on the scoreboard screen for their former player Pierre-Edouard Bellemare.

Bellemare left the team for one reason and one reason only: the salary cap. The young team ran into problems after bringing in Mark Stone and Max Pacioretty and extending the contracts of Fleury, Theodore, Tuch, Schmidt, and Marchessault.

This is part of the business side of hockey that frustrates fans as they get to appreciate players like Bellemare, who was not only valuable to the team on the ice, but also in the locker room and to the Las Vegas community. His injury in the playoff’s first round last season prevented him from playing in Game 7 against the Sharks and played a part in that game’s final score. He was their best penalty-killing forward and his absence was felt.

Yesterday afternoon, it took Bellemare only 28 seconds to shine a bright spotlight on GM George McPhee’s decision to allow him to leave the VGK via free agency for the Avalanche.

Mark Stone is usually a very reliable player, especially on the defensive side of the puck. But his ill-advised cross-ice pass from the left boards was intercepted by Bellemare, who quickly put the puck behind Marc-André Fleury. Fleury had a very rare off day, surrendering 4 goals on just 26 shots in 32:36 of playing time.

It’s rare to see the 4^th line start a game on the road, but Colorado’s coach, in a tribute to Bellemare’s return to T-Mobile, had him taking the opening faceoff. This classy move was rewarded with the first goal of the game. Pierre came into the game with 3 points total through 9 games had the first 3-point night (1G, 2A) of his career.

Bellemare wasn’t the only story to yesterday’s game. The bigger one is that the Colorado Avalanche are for real and will be a playoff team, not only this year, but in the future. They were a team of a single line last year, which is decidedly not the case this year: They now have a complete team that’s lightning fast. That speed, along with their ability to transition from defense to offense quickly, made life difficult for Vegas yesterday. The addition of Nazem Kadri, who had 2 goals in the game, and Bellemare has made this team a contender in the Western Conference going forward.

Philipp Grubauer came into the game with a 5-1-1 record and he stopped all but one of the 26 shots he faced. The only goal that got behind him was the only highlight of the 60 minutes that Vegas shared the ice with the better team. Cody Glass made a crisp pass to Reilly Smith on Grubauer’s right; Reilly sent the puck on a tape-to-tape pass to William Karlsson, who finally scored his first goal of the season with a goaltender in the net. Karlsson had an empty-net goal in Vegas’ 3-0 win in the Pittsburgh game.

Nothing positive can be taken out of this game. The VGK didn’t show up.

Coach Gallant replaced Fleury with Garrett Sparks. In Gallant’s words, it was to save the Flower from shell shock; most of the 26 shots he faced in just 32 minutes were high quality — very unKnight like from a team that’s normally defensively responsible. They just haven’t been of late and a lot of this can be attributed to sloppy play in exiting their defensive zone and bad puck management.

Where are the stretch passes that drove the opposition crazy? Where are the solid safe tape-to-tape passes from one defensman to another when they’re not stretching the ice out? This needs to be corrected soon or other teams will just continue to forecheck and make life difficult on a defense core that’s missing the best player on the back end and has been using 2 rookies to play with Engelland.

My 3 Stars of the Game: Pierre Bellemare (1G, 2A in his return to T-Mobile), Nazem Kadri (2 goals), Philipp Grubauer (25 saves on 26 shots)

Next game is tomorrow evening against Pacific Division Anaheim Ducks at 5 p.m. at T-Mobile.

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