The Golden Knights boarded their flight from Vegas to Minneapolis last Monday missing Tomas Hertl and Alex Pietrangelo. Despite not having a key piece to the offensive engine in Hertl and their alpha blueliner Pietrangelo, the team flew back Saturday night from Nashville with six points in the bag after a perfect week on the road.
Wins over the Wild, Blackhawks and Predators pushed Vegas to a nine-point lead in the Pacific Division with just nine games to play in the regular season.
Vegas has now won six straight games and is playing its best hockey of the season with a near stranglehold on the Pacific as well as sitting third in the Western Conference and fourth overall in the league.
"It's the belief in each other," Jack Eichel said. "You look up and down our lineup. Guys go down, guys step up... everyone has a lot of character and puts the team first and that's what you need."
The Golden Knights have improved in almost all areas. They’re fourth in the league in goals-for per game and eighth in goals-against per game.
No. 1 goalie Adin Hill, pressed into action on Saturday when backup Ilya Samsonov couldn’t go, won all three games over the week and is now 10-1-1 in his last 12 starts. Over that span, Hill has posted a 1.83 GAA and .932 save percentage.
Vegas lost a number of offensive pieces during the offseason to free agency and the buzz around the league focused on goal production. Where would the offense come from?
It turns out it would come from all over the lineup. The Golden Knights have five 20-goal scorers and with Mark Stone sitting at 19 goals will likely reach six and be tied for the league lead.
Golden Knights head coach Bruce Cassidy likes that statistic but also points to his club having 12 skaters with 10 goals or more this season which is tied for first. One step further, Vegas has 16 players with 20 points or more which is just one back of the Washington Capitals in this category.
“Some people will say you need the 40 or 50 goal-scoring players, and they are great to have. We try to manage our minutes and situations. The way we play, I don’t know if I am taking away some of that individual offense for the good of the team,” said Cassidy. “They all have bought into that kind of play. Every forward except Karly (William Karlsson), and only because he has missed time, has double digits in goals, so we are a threat to score every night. I think that is more valuable than one guy because it is harder to shut down six, seven, or eight guys. In the playoffs, those kinds of things matter. You need secondary scoring, and you need scoring from different players. We have that, that is one of the things we have done well all year. It is a good quality in a group.”
Cassidy put together a line on this trip with Karlsson between Reilly Smith and Victor Olofsson and they quickly found chemistry. The trip finished the three-game swing scoring two goals and allowing none when on the ice together. They owned a 16-7 edge in chances and were 7-1 in the high danger chance category.
Karlsson had four assists over the three games, Smith recorded a goal and one assist while Olofsson had two goals and one assist.
Vegas now has a league leading 42 wins in regulation time. Cassidy says he closely watches this statistic as well.
“I keep an eye on [regulation wins] because I think that is important in the playoffs. There is overtime but there is no 3-on-3 and no shootouts,” said Cassidy. “Being able to put games away and win in regulation I think is a good indicator of a strong team.”
