Golden Knights Return To Big Ice House After Four-Week Absence, Lose 6-5 Heartbreaker To Carolina In Shootout Before 18,417 Saturday
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
LVSportsBiz.com photos by J. Tyge O’Donnell
The Golden Knights’ return to Las Vegas after four weeks was a memorable one Saturday night. Also a painful one.
The Knights blew two two-goal leads in the third period and lost, 6-5, in a shootout to the Carolina Hurricanes Saturday night.
New coach, Pete DeBoer. Same troubles in the third period closing games at home.
DeBoer, in his first home game as VGK coach after taking over for fired coach Gerard Gallant last month, used some of the same terms that Gallant used in describing why the Golden Knights failed to close out wins in the third period.
“Puck management,” for example.
It was a wild game. The Knights took a 3-1 lead into period three after 40 minutes of playing solid hockey.
But after the VGK took a 4-2 lead in period three on a short-handed goal by Chandler Stephenson, the Hurricanes scored three straight times to assume a 5-4 lead.
VGK’s Cody Eakin knotted the score at five on a pretty wrap-around goal.
After a scoreless overtime, Carolina won the shootout and came away with the two points. The Knights did salvage a point Saturday night.
Fans celebrate a VGK goal Saturday night.
The Golden Knights also celebrated the Chinese New Year, selling Year of the Rat T-shirts and the pre-game warm-up jerseys
The Golden Knights stormed out well, controlling the early action. VGL led, 2-1, after the first period. And 3-1 after two periods.
And fans embraced the Knights after the four-week stretch of no hockey at T-Mobile Arena.
LVSportsBiz.com scanned the big crowd at T-Mobile Arena and predicted attendance at 18,400. We came up 17 short, Announced attendance was 18,417.
Vegas is eleventh in the NHL in average attendance with 18,286 a game after 28 home dates. The good news is that the VGK is filling the building to 105.3 percent of capacity, good for fourth on the league.
During the first two periods, the Golden Knights controlled play, with Max Pacioretty (24th) and defenseman Jon Merrill (second of the season) notching goals in period one. Carolina scored with 28 seconds left in the period.
Shea Theodore scored in the second period to give the Knights a 3-1 lead after two periods.
Then came the wild and crazy third period, and regulation ended with the Knights and Hurricanes tied at five.
Here’s VGK forward Reilly Smith at his locker discussing the team not slamming the door to secure wins this season.
Jonathan Marchessault also weighed in after the game.
DeBoer was impressed with the VGK home crowd in his first game at T-Mobile Arena as the Knights’ coach after he was fired by the San Jose Sharks earlier this season.
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