Better Effort Needed; Vegas Golden Knights vs. New York Islanders Preview

This might be the Vegas Golden Knights’ most important stretch of the season. They play six of their next seven games at home with plenty of practice time between most of the games. Can the Golden Knights have a winning effort against the New York Islanders?

Betting line: DraftKings has the Golden Knights as minus-148 favorites with an over/under of six goals. The American betting public expects a winning effort by the Golden Knights with 69% support. Can the American betting public make it to the window, or will the sportsbooks win?

Key storylines: The Golden Knights must find a path to four goals and string together 60 minutes of good hockey. Can the Golden Knights find contributions from Michael Amadio, Brett Howden, and Nicolas Roy? Someone besides the household names of Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, and Jonathan Marchessault needs to step up. It can be a different player each night, as long as the Golden Knights can find secondary scoring consistently.

About the Golden Knights (22-12-5, 49 points): This is not an excuse, but the reality is the Golden Knights have missed 150 total games missed by injured players per NHLInjuryViz. That does not include Robin Lehner being on LTIR. Players like William Karlsson, Shea Theodore, and Adin Hill missing games is going to translate to losses. There is no other way around it. Can the Golden Knights find a way to win despite losing key pieces of the lineup?

Expected Lines:

Barbashev-Eichel-Marchessault
Dorofeyev-Stephenson-Stone
Howden-Roy-Kolesar
Denisenko-Amadio-Cotter

Martinez-Pietrangelo
Hague-Whitecloud
McNabb-Cormier

Thompson

Golden Knights to watch: Lukas Cormier expects to make his NHL debut tonight. Cormier had played 89 games over the last two seasons with the Henderson Silver Knights and has 47 points (11 goals). There is a chance the Cormier gets time on the first power play unit as well. Grigori Denisenko expects to draw in for his second game in a row. Denisenko had moments of visibility against the Florida Panthers, can he add some scoring punch to the fourth line?

About the Islanders (18-10-10, 46 points): The Islanders come into Saturday’s game in third place in the Metro Division and are 4-3-3 in their last 10 games. Matthew Barzal leads the Islanders with 39 points. Defenseman Noah Dobson is having a solid season with 38 points in 38 games. That is a reminder as to why the Golden Knights miss Theodore.

Ilya Sorokin expects to start in net for the Islanders and is 12-6-8 with a 3.10 GAA and .912 SV%. That stat line suggests the Islanders give up a lot of shots.

How to watch
Time: 7:00 P.M. PST.
TV: Vegas 34
Stream: KnightTime+
Radio: FOX Sports Las Vegas 98.9/1340