By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
He piles up the wins.
And he seems to have a lot of fun doing it.
The Vegas Golden Knights cruised by the Los Angeles Kings, 6-2 Wednesday evenng in downtown LA at the Staples Center.
And VGK goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who was mentioned in media reports as possible trade bait in the offseason, won his 485th career game and moved into fourth spot on the all-time list.
“Patrick Roy and Martin Brodeur are two guys I idolize. I really loved watching them growing up and they’re big reasons why I wanted to play goalie. It’s pretty cool to be amongst them and Roberto Luongo also,” Fleury said after the game.
The Knights have won four straight games and improved to 29-11-2 as they attempt to catch division-leading Colorado. The Avalanche defeated St. Louis, 4-3, to stay four points ahead of Vegas Wednesday,
While Fleury is an original Golden Knights Misfit, newly-acquired forward Mattias Janmark made his debut with Vegas after coming from the Chicago Blackhawks.
“We dropped a real good player into the lineup,” VGK coach Pete DeBoer said of Janmark.
“I liked all four of our lines tonight,” DeBoer mentioned after the game.
Opening the scoring for Vegas was Tomas Nosek, who has put together a nice season after recovering from COVID-19. He scored his eighth of the season at 7:18 of the first period. It should be noted that defenseman Shea Theodore is piling up the assists with his 27th helper on the Nosek tally.
Nearly four minutes later, VGL forward Alex Tuch notched his 15th goal of the year on a wrister, with the aforementioned Janmark assisting on the goal and goal-scoring Nosek also adding an assist.
After the Kings’ Trevor Moore scored to cut the VGK lead to 2-1, Knights’ forward Max Pacioretty — fresh off scoring his 300th career goal to nights ago — scored with less than five minutes to go in the first stanza with a backhand shot he flipped in from the blue line thanks to a quirky bounce past LA netminder Jonathan Quick. It was the Knights leading, 3-1, after one period thanks to Pacioretty’s 21st of the season.
The Golden Knights opened a three-goal lead in the second period behind center Chandler Stephenson’s ninth goal of the season.
The 4-1 lead was cut to two goals late in the middle stanza when LA’s Moore scored his second of the game and the Knights went into the second intermission leading. 4-2.
Goals by forward Mark Stone (14th of the season) and Alex Pietrangelo (3rd) in the final period salted away the win for the Vegas Golden Knights.
The Golden Knights stay on the road in Southern California with two games in Anaheim against the Ducks after winning six of eight games against LA during this 56-game pandemic season. Their next home game is Monday when the San Jose Sharks come to Las Vegas and T-Mobile Arena.
Wednesday NHL scores: