Golden Knights Takeaways
Golden Knights Struggling; Players, Cassidy Optimistic

“There’s always pockets of the year where it doesn’t go your way. We hit two posts last night. We’re in one of those.”
The Vegas Golden Knights are in a slump. They’ve dropped four games in a row and have lost six of their last seven.
Bruce Cassidy isn’t concerned about the recent string of lost games. He’s frustrated, sure, but not concerned. He knows just as well as anyone that this losing streak isn’t indicative of their play as a whole.
“I don’t think we’re playing poorly,” Cassidy said. “We’re just playing poorly in stretches, stretches that are hurting us so that we’re having to chase the game… It’s not 60 minutes; it’s pockets of it… It’s always coming down to a play here or there.”
The biggest issue with the Golden Knights is that they can’t seem to get out of their own way. And it’s not just one problem that they’re repeatedly running into. In two games against St. Louis and Chicago, they allowed four goals in the last two minutes of a period. In Carolina, the Hurricanes dominated the Golden Knights in the faceoff dot. And in Nashville, the Predators just dominated them.
“We’re the team that [makes the right play at the right time] against other teams,” Cassidy said. “Lately, the shoe’s on the other foot when it comes to that. We’re the ones with the self-inflicted stuff that we have to correct… If it was one thing, if we were giving up seven every night and we were leaky and porous in slot coverage, we could go out on the ice and just hammer away at it. But it seems to be a little bit of situational last minute. So, how do you practice playing better in the last minute? I’m not sure you do. I think that’s [mental].”
But even when the Golden Knights are down on the scoreboard, they’re never out of the game.
“The attitude of ‘we can overcome it’… it’s good to have that attitude… That’s a great quality in this locker room. We’re never out of a game, and that’s great. I just don’t want to rely on that…. That’s a poor formula in the long run.”
Bruce Cassidy On Last Night’s 5-4 Shootout Loss to the St. Louis Blues
“We need to be better in those undetermined possession faceoffs, where we’re not on our toes enough to win the faceoff with the four people around the center… the first goal we gave up last night, we won the draw. We don’t execute a play; they’re coming back, they get behind us, they score off the rush. It’s not like we got dominated in offensive zone possession time. We’re not getting buried.”
“I liked that we found a way to score two goals 6-on-5. That’s probably not going to happen again this year. That’s good, that’s a positive. We got a point because of that. We generated a lot of good looks… Last night, we were off-net with a lot of our best chances… That happens from time to time; it’s just happened a lot lately for us. I think we’re one of the top teams in the league in hitting the net with our high-danger chances. We’re an accurate team.”
Player Reactions
Goaltender Adin Hill echoed Bruce Cassidy’s statement about this string of losses.
“I don’t feel like it’s as big as it’s made out to be. We’ve lost some games. They’ve all been one-goal hockey games. We’re right in them; it’s just that extra save or that extra puck going in for us.”
“It’s tough,” said Hill about the late-period goals allowed. “There’s big momentum shifts in games when you get scored on in the last minute going into the intermission. It’s just been a string of games. We were getting the bounces earlier in the year, and there’s been a few games where we haven’t gotten them.”
Hill, like Cassidy, isn’t worried about the Golden Knights and their play moving forward.
“It’s a long season. It’s an 82-game stretch. For you not to have a slump at some point in the season is pretty rare. You go through a little adversity; we’ll work our way out of it.”
Center Nicolas Roy shares Hill’s sentiments on that matter.
“Every year, you’re going to go through stretches like that. We’re in one right now. I think we have a veteran group. We know we have a good team… I think we’re going to get better. We know we’re going to get out of it.”