Losing last night to the defending Stanley Cup Champions Washington Capitals by a score of 5-2, the Vegas Golden Knights are now 1-3 and have lost two games in a row.
Last year after four games, they were 3-1. So far this season, Vegas has scored just two goals in each of their games for a disappointing eight goals total, while giving up 15. In 2017 in their first four games, they scored 12 goals, while the opposition scored 10. They also won eight of their first nine games.
So is there a problem? You bet there is. And it doesn’t look like it’ll be fixed anytime soon. It’s a problem that will take time to rectify.
Injures are a part of the game and so are suspensions. Nate Schmidt has 16 games to go on his suspension for allegedly using PEDs, Alex Tuch is out with an undisclosed injury serious enough to place him on the IR list, and now you can add Paul Stastny to the IR list; he was sent back to Las Vegas from the road trip, missed last night’s game, and won’t play in the remaining two road games. Barring a miracle infirmary report in regards to Tuch and Stastny, the jackrabbit start that Vegas had in their inaugural season will not be duplicated anytime soon.
The Golden Misfits also lost four key players from last year’s roster: James Neal, David Perron, Tomas Tatar, and Luca Sbisa. They added Max Pacioretty and Paul Stastny, plus Nick Holden on defense. But with Tuch, Stastny, and Schmidt out, a good part of last season’s core is missing. Holden is nowhere near the defenseman that Schmidt is; Natee is their shutdown defenseman who plays the bulk of his minutes against the oppositions’ top lines.
Their goals against of 15 in just four games is a huge problem. Fleury can only do so much.
In last night’s game, Ryan Carpenter not only threw a blind pass backwards in the offensive zone (a big no no), but the pass was intercepted by the Capitals and then, on his back check on Alex Ovechkin, Carpenter never put his stick on the ice. That allowed Ovie to take a clean pass from Kuznetsov to extend the Capitals lead to 4-2 after Vegas had closed the gap twice from two-goal deficits from 2-0 to 2-1 and then from 3-1 to 3-2. Scores that regain a two-goal lead are huge momentum swings for a team.
Another problem that seems to be festering is the Vegas power play, which was 0-8 coming into last night’s game and went 0-3 in their loss to the Caps.
There needs to be some sort of shuffling of the current players on the power play. It’s just not working. The three PPs in last night’s game mustered all of four shots. Coach Gallant has Carpenter playing on the first power-play unit and I’m not sure why. In 52 games last year, Carpenter scored nine goals and had six assists. This is where the absence of Alex Tuch is really an open wound, as his size and speed made the power play a force for most of last season. Granted, they did start last season with only one power-play goal in their first 21 attempts, but Tuch’s big body stationed in front of the net worked wonders throughout the rest of the season.
I’m not the coach, of course, but Gallant could perhaps move Tomas Nosek up to the first power-play unit and use a big body like Ryan Reaves on the second unit. Cody Eakin, who returned to the lineup after missing the first three games, is another possibility. Eakin lacks size, but he has nice soft hands. He scored the VGK’s first goal last night to close the Capital lead to 2-1 with a pretty wraparound goal at the 10:49 mark of the second period, just 31 seconds after Ovechkin’s goal made it 2-0. Though these types of goals can spark a team down by two, Vegas could never seem to get a fluid offensive attack going last night.
The VGK went a 17-minute span in the first and second periods without any scoring chances. Their number-one line of Smith, Karlsson, and Marchessault had only one shot on goal in the entire first period. They eventually wound up with seven total shots for the game.
Fleury can only do so much and with the team scoring two goals a game in all of their games so far, the superstar goalie is left with the task of a shutout or giving up a single goal if he’s expected to help the team win. Last night, Fleury stopped 24 of 28 shots, while the Capitals’ netminder Braden Holtby stopped 29 of 31 shots.
Their road schedule doesn’t get any easier. With tonight’s game in Pittsburgh against the Penguins, they’ll have played three games in four nights against opponents who play well at home.
What’s the solution to their current problem? Is it something that Gallant can put a Band-Aid on until Stastny and Tuch return? I’m not sure. This team wins when all 18 players are playing well and Fleury is Fleury. So far, other than in the game against the Wild that they won 2-1, that hasn’t happened and we won’t see Schmidt until November 16 against the St Louis Blues at T-Mobile.
But I have faith in this team and its coaching staff. They will fix the current problem as best as they can, even considering injuries to two of their top six forwards and the suspension of their best defenseman.
Don’t be surprised if there are some lineup changes in tonight’s game against the Penguins.
Besides, it’s better to have these problems now than at the end of the season when it might be too late to calm the waters.
Tonight’s game in Pittsburgh starts at 4 p.m. Pacific Time.
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