Golden Knights Beat Oilers, 3-1, in Playoff Tune-up Before 18,367

April 1, 2019April 1, 2019 Alan Snel Cody Eakin, Jonathan Marchessault

By ALAN SNEL

LVSportsBiz.com

LVSportsBiz.com photos by J. Tyge O’Donnell

Technically, it was a regular season game but the Golden Knights’ 3-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers Monday night had the feel of a preseason contest.

With the Golden Knights locked into a first-round playoff match-up with the San Jose Sharks, the VGK fielded a bench that lacked star goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, steady veteran defenseman Deryk Eneglland, crafty second-line centerman Paul Stastny and hard-hitting forward William Carrier. VGK’s Ryan Reaves talked about playing a game that had no impact on the Knights’ playoff position.

Even popular T-Mobile Arena Bruce Cusick had to sit out the game with an upper body injury. Just joking there, folks, about the injury — Cusick had no voice so arena emcee Mark Shunock stepped in to announce the few goals, penalties and promotion specials during the game. Cusick was sitting there with Shunock, mentoring him on the finer points of arena announcing such as saying, “Credit One — One (minute) to go in the game.”

Cody Eakin (22nd) and Jonathan Marchessault (25th) scored for the Knights in the first 21 minutes of the game and that was enough for the VGK to secure two points to reach 93 at 43-30-7. Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, out of action for some games nursing a few injuries, deposited a goal into an empty net to round out the scoring with six seconds left. After the game, coach Gerard Gallant discussed the importance of playing the right way even if there’s nothing at stake in the standings.

Goaltender Malcolm Subban, seeing extended game time as Fleury rounds his health into full strength, offered these comments after the win,

The announced attendance was 18,367 — which nudged the VGK’s average attendance after 40 home dates to 18,314 a game, which is filling T-Mobile Arena to 105.5 percent of capacity. The Knights are 12th out of 31 teams in attendance, but its 105.5 percent of attendance capacity is second in the NHL only behind Chicago’s 107.1 percent capacity.

With one regular-season home game left on the schedule — Thursday’s game with the Coyotes — the Knights have drawn 732,582 so far in 2018-19. Multiply that by $100 per ticket and you’re talking more than $70 million in ticket revenue — a huge amount of income for an NHL team.

Fans still had a good time. In the first period. the highlights were some little kids showing their fortnite dance moves for the jumbotron and fan favorite Cameron Hughes doing his dancing and T-shirt tossing.