[Editor’s Note: Joe Pane was out of commission last night, so this summary of last night’s 1-0 VGK win over the New York Islanders was written by Deke Castleman, co-author with Joe of the book Vegas Golden Knights. But Eddie Rivkin was in the locker room after the game, so you can see his videos by clicking on the links at the bottom of this post. ]
The Vegas Golden Knights blanked the New York Islanders 1-0 at T-Mobile last night in front of another sell-out crowd of 18,444. The low score reflects the Islanders’ paltry 19 shots on goal, all of which Marc-André Fleury disposed of quite neatly for his 60th career shutout. It moves the Flower up to 18th on the list of most career shutouts, one behind Toronto’s Turk Broda, but still 65 behind Martin Brodeur (Brodeur played 1,266 games for the New Jersey Devils and St. Louis Blues, compared to Fleury’s 840 so far for Vegas and Pittsburgh). Fleury was wearing his custom gold goalie pads for the game (after some protracted encouragement from Nate Schmidt).
The Knights had 43 shots on goal and though they won the game, Islanders’ goalie Semyon Varlamov blocked 42 of them for a .977 save percentage. The VGK now lead the NHL in shots on goal per game at 34.6.
Reilly Smith scored the night’s only goal with assists from Jonathan Marchessault and Schmidt. Marchessault registered seven shots on goal, as did Shea Theodore. It was an amazing performance by Varlamov, who nonetheless took the loss.
The VGK are now 6-3-2 since Peter DeBoer replaced Gerard Gallant as head coach.
Smith’s goal occurred with 34 seconds left in the second. Until then, the most exciting moment took place three seconds after the game started, right after the opening puck drop, when Ryan Reaves and Ross Johnston tossed their gloves and exchanged a few blows — just for fun. It turned out that Johnston knew British heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury was at the game, so the two bruisers agreed beforehand to put on a little show for him.
The win moves Vegas into second place in the Pacific Division with 68 points, tied with the Edmonton Oilers, but don’t rejoice just yet. The Oilers beat the Florida panthers 4-1 yesterday and have two games in hand on the VGK, whom they face three more times in the last 23 games of this regular season.
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