Vegas hasn't allowed a goal on the penalty kill this season. Teams are 0-for-9 on the man advantage.
The Vegas Golden Knights have been impressive on their penalty kill. They are a 9-for-9 on the season.
The reason for the success? The team's use of pressure in the right spots.
"We're in sync with our pressure," Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said after the team's 4-1 victory against the Anaheim Ducks. "It's not one guy going, it's all three and then the fourth guy is the safety valves, who's in a good spot."
The penalty kill was 19th in the league last season, killing off 78.4 percent of penalties. Cassidy attributes this to installing a new system that was different from what previous coaches had done.
What helped the Golden Knights, however, was being the least penalized team in the NHL, meaning they weren't on the kill too often.
Early this season, the Golden Knights have found themselves in the box more often than they would like, prompting them to have more opportunities to kill penalties.
The team also lost Reilly Smith, who was one of the team's better penalty killers, prompting them to use a committee to players, including Jack Eichel and Keegan Kolesar on killing penalties.
"Coaching staff asked me. 'We want to get you in the PK. What do you think of that? I was all for it, and am trying to pay more attention to it," Kolesar said. "We have more guys going in the rotation that didn't before. So you see Jack to the PK more, me ... Will Carrier has gone in. Starting to incorporate new faces into it, and I think it's maybe shaking things up."
It has been an adjustment for Kolesar, who hasn't regularly killed penalties before.
"It's s weird. I might have done it once in my life back in juniors my second year. The coach said, I did a bad job, so he pulled me off it," Kolesar said. "So it's a lot of video. It's a lot of talking with guys in the team like [Chandler Stephenson]. I asked him a lot of things on the bench, working with John Stevens, our D coach. He runs a PK, so I just asked him questions all the time. We watch video, trying to learn as much as I can"
The Golden Knights will eventually give up a goal on the penalty kill, which is something Cassidy expects given the nature of hockey.
Until then, however, the team will continue to tweak and improve on one of the areas that was a big area of emphasis that the team wanted to improve on from last season.
Even so, it hasn't hurt the team thus far, as the team continues to tweak and adjust its comfort level.
"It's still early, but it's more about just the guys being comfortable when to be aggressive," Cassidy said. "It always comes down to the numbers, eventually. Are you getting timely saves on it when you breakdown or when they make good plays? So far, we've gotten those."
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