Golden Knights Drop Another Home Game as Franchise’s First Boos Heard on Home Ice

By ALAN SNEL

LVSportsBiz.com

 

LVSportsBiz.com photos by J. Tyge O’Donnell

 

It was not a good night for the Vegas Golden Knights Friday.

 

The Knights gave up a goal less than a minute into the game with the Winnipeg Jets and then the deficit was quickly, 2-0. And then, there were boos from the hometown fans for the first time in VGK history during an anemic Knights power play in period one.

 

And after the Golden Knights knotted the score at two in the second period, Jets forward Patrik Laine fired an Ovechkin-like laser shot past VGK goalie Marc-Andre Fleury on a Jets power play before the VGK allowed a fourth Winnipeg goal with 3.7 seconds left in the second period.

 

It was a back-breaker goal that extended the Jets lead to 4-2 and the Knights never recovered.

 

A crowd of an announced 18,280 watched the Knights lose another home game — 6-3.

 

We have to find the Misfits again because I don’t see them lately. I don’t like what I’m seeing and I don’t like our game.

— VGK coach Gerard Gallant

 

The Vegas franchise is 3-9-1 in its past 13 games and no amount of creative or fun in-game presentation features like the Drumbots performance between periods one and two could give fans a good feeling as they departed T-Mobile Arena.

 

A miracle inaugural season that culminated with a unicorn run to the Stanley Cup Finals has raised the bar of expectations for VGK fans. And while the team is officially in a playoff spot as the third-place team in the Pacific Division, the Knights have hit an extended rough stretch that reminds fans that the team is still a second-year expansion club.

 

During his postgame presser, coach Gerard Gallant had a simple but cutting question — What happened to the Misfits, the players with chips on their shoulders who skated with an edge and with a sense of urgency last season?

 

Here’s Gallant’s comments in a presser that didn’t last three minutes.

 

In the lockerroom, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, who scored the VGK’s first goal, offered these comments.

And here’s forward Max Pacioretty.

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