Golden Knights’ homestand officially a success after win over Senators

By Case Keefer (contact)

Sunday, Oct. 28, 2018 | 9:40 p.m.

Trapped underneath Erik Haula against the ice, Jonathan Marchessault couldn’t see the smoke shooting off towards the rafters but he could hear the roar of 18,089 fans drowning out T-Mobile Arena’s notoriously blaring bass.

The scene after Marchessault’s game-winning, penalty-shot goal to lead the Golden Knights to a 4-3 overtime victory over the Ottawa Senators Sunday night was one of pure glee, the level of which the team hadn’t yet experienced this season.

“I was excited,” Marchessault said several minutes afterwards in the locker room, beads of sweat still racing down his face. “As a group, we really needed that game.”

The noise hadn’t reverberated that loudly at the Golden Knights’ home rink since last season’s Stanley Cup Final run, and in a way, the win over the Senators was almost as important. The game wrapped up a season-long five-game homestand that the Golden Knights wanted to use to jump-start their season.

They came dangerously close to squandering that opportunity with two straight losses — to the Lightning on Friday and in overtime to the Canucks on Wednesday— before bouncing back against Ottawa. The win enabled them to extract seven total points during the homestand in the standings with a 3-1-1 record.

That’s an undeniable success, even though Coach Gerard Gallant admitted, “it doesn’t feel that way,” because of the negativity coming into the Ottawa game. Marchessault’s hope is that the thrilling comeback changes the mood into a positive one with Vegas holding a 5-5-1 overall record going into road games at Nashville on Tuesday and St. Louis on Thursday.

“It’s not where we want to be as a group to start the year but all teams face adversity,” he said. “We have a lot of injuries right now. It’s no excuse; we just have to see it as guys need to step up.”

One of the players who was a big part of the injury rash stepped up against the Senators. In his third game back, Alex Tuch was the Golden Knights’ best player.

He appeared to take it as an affront that the building fell silent when Ottawa went up 2-0 in the second period. Tuch took matters into his own hands, creating a turnover in the defensive zone before racing the puck all the way down to the other side and beating Ottawa goalie Craig Anderson through the legs.

“That’s the good part about playing for this team: Honestly, everyone wants to make that play,” Tuch said. “I was fortunate enough to be the one to be able to change the momentum scoring-wise.”

Despite the deficit, Vegas was already playing well — putting in many of their franchise-record 53 shots on goal early — before Tuch’s end-to-end highlight. But it suddenly looked more determined.

Ryan Reaves served as an unlikely hero three minutes later, tying the game with his first career power-play goal.

When Ryan Dzingel scored to put Ottawa up 3-2 in the third period, Tuch answered with a second goal — the third multiple-goal game of the 22-year old’s career — 28 seconds later.

Gallant hinted that the resiliency started late in the first period with an incident that had nothing to do with the score. Third-line center Cody Eakin may have joined the Golden Knights’ injury list — though Gallant had no update after the game — when he took a shoulder to the head from Senators enforcer Mark Borowiecki.

Golden Knights defenseman Jon Merrill went after Borowiecki immediately, engaging in the team’s second fight of the season. Merrill came away with a black eye and took a couple big punches from Borowiecki, who was hit with a game-misconduct penalty and ejected, but Gallant saw it as necessary.

“Jon Merrill obviously stepping up for his teammates was real big,” Gallant said. “Jonny’s not a big fighter but when your teammate gets run over like that, he stepped up and it was perfect — exactly what you have to do.”

A penalty may have sparked the Golden Knights in the first place, but one definitely spurred them to the victory ultimately. Marchessault got loose midway through the overtime period, and Ottawa’s Mark Stone blatantly hooked him right before he got to the net to lead to the penalty shot.

Having already missed attempts in two shootouts this season, Marchessault said he didn’t come in with a plan and decided instead to take whatever Anderson gave him. He fired the puck just inside the post to give the Golden Knights their biggest moment of celebration of the season, at a time when they needed it the most.

“We wanted to grow as a team on and off the ice during this homestand,” Tuch said. “We know it’s going to be a tough two games on the road, so we have to be ready to keep building.”

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