Golden Knights not panicked after Flyers provide ‘a good slap in the face’

By Case Keefer (contact)

Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018 | 11:30 p.m.

Gerard Gallant’s final words in Thursday’s pregame media conference were a message of patience.

“There’s lot of time,” Gallant said in brushing off a question about making a major change early in the season.

The Vegas Golden Knights’ coach may need to heed his own words after his team opened its second season with a 5-2 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers Thursday night at T-Mobile Arena. There will not be a repeat of last year’s start when the Golden Knights caught fire to win their initial three games and eight of their first nine.

If the Golden Knights are going to regain the form that propelled them to a Stanley Cup Final appearance in their inaugural season, it may take a while.

A lopsided loss in front of a regular-season record 18,555 fans on a night when the franchise debuted Western Conference and Pacific Division championship banners was not what the Golden Knights envisioned. And it’s not going to get any easier with Vegas headed on the road for its next five games, four of them against fellow playoff teams from a year ago.

Players were understandably terse in the locker room after the loss, but their brief evaluations of the team’s performance spoke volumes.

“Terrible,” Jonathan Marchessault said as he shook his head.

“Embarrassing,” Marc-Andre Fleury chose as his descriptor.

“A good slap in the face,” Pierre-Edouard Bellemare remarked.

Vegas made first contact, though. After player introductions, a banner ceremony and raucous accompanying applause to make for an environment that Marchessault described as, “the best, as usual,” the Golden Knights blazed through an opening 10 minutes that impressed Gallant.

They had the bulk of the early scoring chances, but could only cash in on one — a Marchessault wrist shot past the blocker side of Flyers’ goalie Brian Elliott. Some fans also celebrated a couple minutes earlier when it looked like a Shea Theodore shot found the back of the net, but it hit off the bottom of the post and traveled horizontally out of the other side of the crease.

Gallant looked back at that unlucky break as a turning point.

“It would have made it 2-0,” Gallant said. “After that, they pretty well took over the game.”

Or from Marchessault’s perspective, the Golden Knights gave them the game. Defensive lapses became commonplace as an odd man rush led to Oskar Lindblom beating Marc-Andre Fleury with a backhand for the Flyers’ first goal at 11:24 of the first period.

Jon Merrill, who’s forced into a more prominent role because of a 20-game suspension to top defensemen Nate Schmidt, got caught out of position to lead to the score.

The Flyers’ next two goals bugged Gallant more, however, as Wayne Simmonds bruised his way in front of the net to poke rebounds past Fleury.

“We can eliminate those goals if we work a little bit harder,” Gallant said.

Meanwhile, the Golden Knights’ offense dried up.

The team’s rebuilt second line, featuring prized offseason acquisitions Max Pacioretty and Paul Stastny, was disjointed. The third member of the unit, Erik Haula, got called for slashing ahead of Simmonds’ second score, a power-play goal.

The third line — consisting of Oscar Lindberg, Tomas Nosek and Ryan Carpenter — was even worse. A makeshift group because of the injuries to Alex Tuch and Cody Eakin, the third line provided no offense while the Flyers scored a pair of goals during their time on the ice.

The second made the score 5-1 with Scott Laughton tapping in a puck from Radko Gudas. Gallant opted to pull Fleury for Malcolm Subban afterwards, only the second time the star goalie has been substituted out as a Golden Knight.

“It was on the team,” Gallant said. “I did not like the way we were playing. I didn’t like the tap-in goal there. Marc might be upset with himself but it wasn’t Marc-Andre Fleury.”

Fleury didn’t have a problem with being pulled, as he took responsibility for the goals and said it was a worthwhile move to try to spark a comeback. Subban was stellar in relief with nine saves, but the Golden Knights’ only goal while he was in came when Pierre-Edouard Bellemare created a turnover early in the third period and buried a shot past Elliott.

The team unanimously echoed Gallant’s sentiment and blamed themselves for letting Fleury down.

“We left Fleury high and dry back there,” Pacioretty said. “It’s bad when you leave your best player high and dry. We’ll make it up to him.”

Gallant doesn’t doubt it. He’s said he’s rarely ever been disappointed with the Golden Knights’ effort level in more than a year on the job and the opener was no exception as he noted the team worked hard.

It was just a game where a lot went wrong. That’s going to happen over the course of a long season.

“We’ll chalk that up to a tough night, and hope we don’t see many more of them,” Gallant said.

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.