Golden Knights Gameday #14: Military Appreciation Night; Lines & Notes vs Wild

The Vegas Golden Knights (7-6) are set to take on the Minnesota Wild (9-3) for the first time this season Thursday night at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The Golden Knights are coming off a strong win against the Seattle Kraken on Tuesday and are slowly but surely becoming a more healthy team.

Up against the Central Division leading Wild, this will be a measuring stick game for head coach Peter DeBoer and the Golden Knights.

Tonight is Military Appreciation Night across the NHL, and the Golden Knights are celebrating in true Vegas fashion. Outside of T-Mobile Arena is a “seven-tier barrel tree” made up of barrels of Jack Daniels. Since 2011, Jack Daniel’s has sponsored an “operation ride home” program that helps members of the US Military return home for the holidays.

The “tree” will be lit in a pregame ceremony starting at 4:15 pm. Fans can also purchase individual barrels of the Jack Daniels seven-tier barrel tree.

On top of this, the Golden Knights will be wearing special camouflage jerseys during warmups and they will be signed by the players and then auctioned off online starting at the ten-minute mark in the third period.

What to Watch

In Tuesday night’s game against the Seattle Kraken, checked off a lot of things that they needed to get done to remain in the Pacific Division playoff hunt. They once again got superb goaltending from Robin Lehner, offense from the defense, and scored a powerplay goal at home.

The bottom-six and depth for the Golden Knights are also starting to come around. Paul Cotter and Jake Leschyshyn had a few solid shifts each in the bottom six. William Carrier has two assists and Evgenii Dadonov scored.

For the Golden Knights, they need to replicate Tuesday’s effort and try to start a winning streak as they are still sitting around .500. We are now over a month into the NHL season and the Stanley Cup Contending Golden Knights find themselves out of the playoff picture currently. The Edmonton Oilers are four points ahead of the Golden Knights in the Pacific Division Standings and have two games at hand.

At Golden Knights practice today, Mark Stone once again skated but is still not ready to rejoin the team yet. William Carrier was absent from practice and Michael Amadio rejoined line rushes.

PROJECTED VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS LINE COMBINATIONS

Jonathan Marchessault- Nicolas Roy- Reilly Smith

Evgenii Dadonov- Chandler Stephenson- Keegan Kolesar

Michael Amadio- Jake Leschyshyn- Mattias Janmark

Jonas Rondbjerg- Brett Howden- Paul Cotter

Nicolas Hague- Alex Pietrangelo

Alec Martinez- Shea Theodore

Brayden McNabb- Dylan Coghlan

Robin Lehner/Laurent Brossoit

IR: Jack Eichel, William Karlsson, Max Pacioretty, Mark Stone, Nolan Patrick, Zach Whitecloud

PROJECTED MINNESOTA WILD LINE COMBINATIONS PER PUCKPEDIA

Marcus Foligno- Joel Erikson Ek- Kevin Fiala

Kirill Kaprizov- Frederick Gaudreau- Mats Zuccarello

Brandon Duhaime- Nico Sturm- Ryan Hartman

Jordan Greenway- Nick Bjugstad- Rem Pitlick

Alex Goligoski- Jared Spurgeon

Jonas Brodin- Matt Dumba

Jon Merrill- Dmitry Kulikov

Cam Talbot/Kappo Kahkonen

IR: Matthew Boldy

How to Watch/Listen

TV: ESPN+ 7:00 pm local

Radio: Fox Sports 98.9 FM