Knights on Ice — “Fleury’s Puck Handling Has Made a Difference”

With 2:03 left in the game that was controlled for almost 58 minutes by the VGK, NBC analyst Pierre McGuire said, “Fleury’s puck handling has made a difference.” Just 8 seconds later, Fleury misplayed a puck with zero pressure on him, which allowed Josh Anderson to slide the puck into an open net to tie the game. In overtime, Anderson took advantage of a bad line change, which created a 2-0 on Fleury, and the VGK lost 3-2.

But before you put the entire blame on Fleury, there’s more to this defeat than one mistake and there was a lot of good for at least the first 58 minutes. In Games 1 and 2 of this series, Montreal had the better play, especially in the first periods. The VGK made the necessary adjustments and had this game right where they wanted it. They took a 2-1 lead when Alex Pietrangelo scored early in the 3rd period. Vegas had stifled the Montreal offense, limiting them to no shots on goal for the first 11 minutes of the game, then held them to 3 shots in the first period and a grand total of 8 after 2 periods. Vegas had 30 shots on Carey Price in the same time frame.

In overtime, there’s the long change that teams are faced with in the 2nd period, as their bench is on the opposite end of their defensive zone; a bad line change can lead to a goal that there’s no coming back from. Giving up a goal on a bad line change in the 2nd period is not as devastating as one in overtime.

And that’s exactly what happened. Alex Pietrangelo lofted the puck into the neutral zone toward Reilly Smith and Jonathan Marchessault near the Montreal blueline. Alex and Tomas Nosek headed to the bench for a change. Smith couldn’t reach the puck along the wall and Marchessault was in the middle of the neutral zone in no man’s land.

Jesperi Kotkaniemi beat Reilly Smith to the puck and when Shea Theodore attempted to join the rush, Kotkaniemi lofted the puck back toward the opposite blueline. Josh Anderson knocked the puck out of mid-air. He and Paul Byron moved in on Fleury 2-0. It’s very rare to see a 2-0 in a hockey game; it’s almost nonexistent in overtime.

DeBoer’s style is to have his defensemen join in on the rush, except this rush was thwarted at the blueline and Theodore was headed north while the Anderson and Byron were headed south with the puck. Fleury had to make a choice to take Byron who had the puck or cheat toward Anderson. Fleury made the wiser move on Byron, because a lot can wrong on a pass. Byron could flub the pass and/or Anderson could not take it cleanly, giving Fleury a chance to slide over and make one of those amazing right-to-left saves (many of you have a statue commemorating just such a save in a game against Toronto). But Byron’s pass was perfect and Anderson had a completely open net for the 2nd time in less than 15 minutes for the goal that ended a game that should have been over in 60 minutes.

Before you lose hope, all is not lost. The Knights can and should win Sunday’s game, which will make it a 3-game series with 2 of the 3 games being at T-Mobile. After all, this the #1-ranked team vs. the #16-ranked team. A one-game upset is common, but in a 7-game series, most of the time the better team wins and in this case, no matter what has happened so far, Vegas is the better team hands down.

Other notes and post-game comments.

Besides Fleury’s flub, Montreal had one of its own when Eric Staal threw the puck blindly out from behind his net right on to the stick of Nicolas Roy, who in one swift motion lifted the puck over Carey Price’s left shoulder for the 1-0 VGK lead. Take note of this tidbit: the #1 pick in the 2003 entry draft was Marc-André Fleury; the #2 in the same draft was Eric Staal. It can happen to anyone, even the top 2 players in the 2003 draft.

“Those types of events are tough to recover from,” DeBoer said about the tying goal, forcing the game into overtime. “We talked between the third and overtime about trying to get our mojo back. I didn’t think we were poor in overtime, but there’s no doubt that carried over for us on the negative side and for sure gave them some pop going out to overtime.”

“Fleury’s played great for us all year,” Mark Stone said. “It’s one mistake. We had to bail him out, but didn’t play in overtime the way we played for the first 60.”

“The power play wasn’t great,” DeBoer said. “That was probably the only piece of our game that wasn’t. There are things to fix this time of year for every team in the league, and that’s something that we’ve got to continue to work at.”

I will close with this. At this time of the year, you should not have to be working on the power play. You had 56 games to figure it out. You’re 0-12 just in this series. You’ve lost the last 2 games by 1 goal. And in these last 2 losses, your power play is 0-6. How important would a power play goal have been in either one of these games? Let me answer my own question: This series would look totally different right about now.

My 3 Stars of the Game
1) Josh Anderson (2 goals, including the GWG in overtime)
2) Carey Price (32 saves on 34 shots)
3) Cole Caufield (1G just 38 seconds after Roy’s goal, which was huge in stemming Vegas’ momentum)

Next game is tomorrow at the Belle Center 5 p.m. Pacific Time.

If you want to hear and see more VGK content please check out the podcast I do with Eddie Rivkin on YouTube, Hockey Knights in Vegas.

Your comments and opinions are welcome here at Las Vegas Advisor or you may contact me directly at [email protected] or on my Facebook page or the Face Facebook page of Vegas Hockey Guy or on Twitter @TheRealJoePane

One other note: If you’re reading this blog from Facebook or Twitter and would like to access it earlier in the morning before I share it on social media, it’s usually published by 8 a.m. the morning after a game on LasVegasAdvisor.com. What better way is there to enjoy your morning coffee than reading my take on last night’s VGK game.

Roy’s goal

Fleury’s flub that leads to overtime

Anderson’s GWG