Las Vegas, N.V.— When Leo Carlsson scored to give the Anaheim Ducks a 4-0 lead over the Vegas Golden Knights, a colleague turned to me and said: “Ah, they’ve got Anaheim right where they want ‘em.” As it turns out, he was right.
Last season, the Golden Knights earned a reputation as a third-period team. They’d start well, but fall asleep at the wheel during the second period; when they woke up, they trailed by a seemingly insurmountable number of goals.
But somehow, the Golden Knights were never out of any game. It didn’t matter how lethargic they looked, or how deflating the box score looked. They refused to roll over and die. As the kids say, they “didn’t hear no bell.”
Last year’s script returned with a vengeance in tonight’s 4-3 loss to the Ducks.
The Golden Knights started fairly well, but trailed by a goal after the first period. After the second period, they were fully in the hole and trailed by four. And yet, as soon as Shea Theodore scored to break Lukáš Dostál’s shutout bid, the comeback was on.
This time, the hole was simply too deep.
“You give yourself credit for fighting back, but you never want to put yourself in those situations,” said Golden Knights captain Mark Stone. “You’re never gonna see this team quit. I think that’s why we’ve had some playoff success and some regular season success as a team. We don’t quit. We continue to push. But when you get down in a hole 4-0, you’re not gonna come back very often.”
1. Goonies Never Say Die
Their comeback fell just short, and the Golden Knights have officially recorded their first loss of the season. But you can’t say that they didn’t give it the old college try.
“It’s frustrating, because we know that shouldn’t be happening,” said Brett Howden. “We’re gonna learn from it here. We’re gonna move on. It’s a good thing it’s only game two. We liked the end of our game, the push, and we obviously want to build off that going on this little road trip.”
Obviously, the result isn’t what they wanted. But they don’t hate everything about their game. They liked their push at the end, and they liked how efficiently they tilted the ice.
They just didn’t like that it took them so long to start rallying.
“When you play these games, one-nothing’s fine,” Stone continued. “Two-nothing’s fine. You probably have a chance to come back to the game. Once it gets to three, four, that’s when it starts to be a tall task, as you saw tonight. We did a really good job scoring three goals. It’s doable, but that 4th one, it’s just difficult. You can’t start cheating the game; you have to find ways to have better pushback.”
2. Do You Get Déjà Vu?
Despite trailing 4-0 heading into the third period, the Golden Knights ended up making it a game. Ultimately, however, a four-goal deficit proved too much to overcome.
I’ve heard that story once or twice before.
“Obviously, we don’t want to fall into what was kind of the story last year,” Brett Howden stressed postgame. “[Last season], we’d have a good first, and kind of let off in the second, and then make a good push in the third, and make a comeback out of it. It was a good effort in the third, a good effort to stick with it.”
The Golden Knights know what the overarching theme was last season. However, they insist that this year is different. Now, they know what the issues are. They know what they have to fix.
“It’s early in the season,” agreed Golden Knights captain Mark Stone. “I like that we started to build some better habits leading into the next game.”
3. New Year, New Me
This is only the second game of the season. It’s far too soon to ring any alarm bells or hit any panic buttons. There’s no reason to think this game was anything more than a one-off for the Golden Knights.
Maybe the fact that they’re aware of the dangerous territory they’re drifting towards is a sign that this year is different.
“I think it’s a mindset,” said Brett Howden following the game. “I think we’ve got to realize the situation at hand. I think we can be a little bit smarter in some areas, especially the second. I think that’ll kind of lead to everything else, by getting more o-zone time, getting more time with the puck and then creating offensive chances off of it.”
Everyone is saying all the right things. They’re addressing the similarities between this game and last season’s, and they’re also breaking down why it’s different.
“Well, we have to stop bleeding,” said head coach Ryan Craig. “We don’t want one to turn into two, into three, into four like it did tonight… I loved our response, how we continued to push, and the energy there… But it’s a new year. I don’t think it had anything to do with reverting back to what the stats show last year.”
Only time will tell if they’re right.
