Across the Hall: Vegas showing NHL they're back whether you like it or not
Across the Hall: Vegas showing NHL they're back whether you like it or not
The Golden Knights are the hottest team in the league at 13-2-0 and winners of nine straight
BUFFALO, N.Y. — It may have been Jack Eichel’s gleaming moment of personal redemption during the Vegas Golden Knights 7-4 romp over the Buffalo Sabres, but it was a full 20-man exhibition of what makes Vegas the best team in the NHL.
Becoming hyperbolic about how Vegas’ 13-2-0 record to start the season is very easy to do. Any bold take, not necessarily a hot take, about how they’re a team destined to get back to the Stanley Cup Final and perhaps win it all would seem premature, but not out of the question.
Saying it about a team that’s won nine straight games would be foolish because, hey, we’ve seen multiple teams rattle off 10 or more in a row and not amount to anything by the time the season ended. Even a team that swept a five-game road trip would be more difficult make those kinds of proclamations about. But the Golden Knights have accomplished all three of those in the wake of their offensive barrage Thursday in Buffalo and it makes it a little more difficult to say it’s just a good start to the season. That’s why I’m where I am, and the players are the ones doing their job on the ice.
“It’s easier and it’s hard at the same time,” Alex Pietrangelo told me when I asked him before the game if having a hot start like this makes it easier or harder to stay focused on the long road ahead. “I think it’s good because we know where we need to be in terms of our pace and what level we need to play at. So, if things do kind of not go the way we want to, we can look back and say, ‘Look, this is what we were doing when we were being successful at the start of the season, let’s get back to that.’ And that’s going to happen. You play a lot of games, a lot of travel, and that catches up to you eventually.”
If any team is more aware about how quickly fortunes can change, it’s Vegas. Injuries ravaged the roster last season and it seemed no one was exempt from it. NHLInjuryViz on Twitter, who also keeps a tremendous blog on their injury statistical analysis, shared this after the regular season ended last year:
Vegas had the second most man games lost to injury behind Montréal, but their injuries had a vastly bigger impact on what they took away from their lineup at nearly 9.5 wins above replacement. Considering Vegas missed the playoffs by three points, losing as many as 18 points in the standings is a bit of overkill on how much injuries cost them.
Not having Eichel, Max Pacioretty, Mark Stone, Reilly Smith, Alec Martinez, Nicolas Hague, Robin Lehner, and Nolan Patrick for large swaths of the season severely put a dent in any big ideas they had when it came to making another deep run in the playoffs. Having everyone apart from Lehner and Patrick back and fully healthy this season clearly made a difference and added another layer of motivation.
“Everybody was writing us off, right? I think this organization has had a lot of success, so I think a lot of people wanted to see us fail,” Stone, Vegas’ captain, said. “But we know what we’ve got in the locker room, we knew we were going to come back strong. Obviously, a little bit of motivation, but also motivation for ourselves. We don’t want to be missing playoffs. We were watching those games. It’s one of the (most fun) times of the year, so we want to get back to where we know we should be.”
On Thursday, they showed why they’re the top of the charts and it was Eichel who led the way.
“It felt good,” Eichel said. “I had a couple of breakaways. You guys were here. They were obviously on me all night. Yeah, it felt good to get one. It weas a big point in the game for our group. It never felt like we were fully in control.”
The humility of Eichel is Classic Jack for a postgame. That may seem hard to believe after how his postgame interview went after last season’s loss in Buffalo, but he was never self-aggrandizing as a Sabre and always a guy who would give atta-boys to teammates after wins.
Eichel was booed heartily last season, something Eichel admitted before the game on Thursday was something he wasn’t appropriately prepared for.
“I probably shouldn’t have been last year, but I was maybe a little bit surprised by the reception,” he said. “I’m just like anyone else. I’m a human being. It was emotional for me like it probably was for them. Maybe I was a little bit hurt. That’s probably why I said the things I said.”
The boos were tough last year, but they were vitriolic this time around. He was booed hard anytime he hit the ice for a shift and even more so when he had the puck. He was sarcastically cheered when he was responsible for icing calls against Vegas and some of the loudest cheers of the game were for Sabres goalie Eric Comrie when he twice stopped Eichel on breakaways.
But the Eichel we saw Thursday night was the same one who played so brilliantly in KeyBank Center for seasons, particularly in 2019-2020 which, for now, stands as his best season in the NHL. On Thursday, being over a year removed from the trade and almost a year removed from neck surgery, he was at 100 percent and thriving, eager to show his former home fans what they used to have. Vegas is bonded because of how last season played out, but they were steeled together behind Eichel.
“Just trying to support the guy, I’m right there with him. I’ve said that thing from day one, though. Just play with us,” Stone said of Eichel after the game. “We don’t need him to do too much, we just need him to be him. And tonight, that’s our only message. I’m going to back this guy no matter what. He’s one of my more impressive teammates I’ve ever played with, if not the best player I’ve ever played with. It’s all about support in this locker room. Everybody supporting each other and I couldn’t be happier for the guy, he deserves it.”
The Golden Knights are united under a common cause to get back to the playoffs and go deep into them and win the Stanley Cup. Getting performances like that from Eichel go a long way to showing that they can absolutely do that, but Thursday’s game wasn’t a total walk in the park. Vegas got the goals, but the Sabres stuck to their heels and wouldn’t go away for the most part. That Vegas was able to not wilt under their pressure and instead reach another gear is the sign of a team that’s meant to do bigger things.
“We're still learning how to close out games. I think we've done a good job with it,” Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said. “I give Buffalo credit, they didn't quit, they kept playing, but we get it back in a hurry. We get to our game in a hurry. It’s a veteran enough group that they know, ‘OK, we got to take care of business, let's reset’ type of thing, and I think you're seeing a lot of that in this league now. There's so many teams have the ability to score and come back because of the offensive defenseman piece now and the way the game is played. So, you can never take your foot off the gas, and you got to expect that the other team is going to push, right? So, I don't think we panic at all, I know we don't panic at all. It's just, hey, let's get back to our game and…focus and we’ve been good at that.”
Getting goals from players on every line, a goal from the defense by Pietrangelo, and good enough goaltending from Logan Thompson, who’s been brilliant so far this season, gives you an idea of the layers of depth Vegas has. They’re a fully armed and operational—and healthy—hockey team again and that means anyone who thought last season was the beginning of the end for the Golden Knights might be a lot more frustrated this time around.
“It’s not so much what we have to prove to the outside world, it’s within this locker room within each other,” Pietrangelo said. “We need to prove we’ve still got something special here and so far, we believe in that, and I don’t think that’s going to change as the season goes on. It’s nice to have some early success because you kind of get that energy and mojo going into the rest of the year. So, we’ve got to keep that momentum.”