Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

‘Awful’ second period the difference in Golden Knights’ loss to Blues

Stephenson

Jeff Roberson / AP

St. Louis Blues’ Justin Faulk (72) checks Vegas Golden Knights’ Chandler Stephenson into the boards during the first period of an NHL hockey game Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019, in St. Louis.

ST. LOUIS — There was a 90-second stretch in the second period that defined the entire game. The Golden Knights’ power play expired, they allowed the player in the box to get a breakaway, then gave up two quick goals. A close game was suddenly out of hand.

The Golden Knights had a disastrous second period on Thursday, and it cost them a chance at a quality road win against an elite opponent. Instead, they fell to the St. Louis Blues 4-2 at Enterprise Center and were left kicking themselves.

“You can’t let yourself slip for even five or 10 minutes, whatever it was, when they kind of poured it on,” defenseman Jon Merrill said. “It’s a competitive league top to bottom, so you’ve got to be ready to go for the whole 60 minutes.”

Most of the game wasn’t too bad for Vegas, which belies the final score. The Golden Knights answered the Blues’ first goal with two of their own to grab a lead after the first period, and in the third they fought back and found themselves with some grade-A chances.

The second period, though, was a problem.

“Our second was awful," forward Jonathan Marchessault said.

The Blues had nine high-danger scoring chances for the entire game, according to Natural Stat Trick, and eight of those came in a 20-minute horror show for Vegas. St. Louis scored just 1:34 seconds into the frame on a gorgeous deflection from Oskar Sundqvist, then kept applying the pressure.

The Golden Knights got a brief respite from the Blues’ attack in the form of a power play, but the instant it was over the Blues were right back at it. Alex Pietrangelo hopped out of the box and had a breakaway chance 16 seconds later, then Jaden Schwartz scored 36 seconds afterward. Thirty-nine seconds after that, St. Louis scored again.

In the second period at 5-on-5, the Blues led in high-danger chances 8-1, shot attempts 23-11 and held 77.5% of the expected goals.

“I thought we had a good first and I think maybe got a little sure of ourselves coming out in the second,” Merrill said. “I thought we tried to be a little too cute in the second, and it cost us.”

There were plenty of positives to take away, though. Max Pacioretty scored for the second game in a row on a strong individual effort where he picked up his own rebound. Later in the first, Vegas orchestrated a perfect set piece where Tomas Nosek floated a cross-ice pass to Nate Schmidt, whose shot landed right in front of William Carrier for an easy back-hander. It was 2-1 then and Vegas was feeling good.

The third period saw the kind of push you want to see from a team trailing by two. The Golden Knights were as good statistically in the third as they were bad in the second, but the goals didn’t materialize. They held St. Louis to two shots on goal in the period and 0.07 expected goals at 5-on-5.

Overall for the game, Vegas had a better share of shot attempts, scoring chances and expected goals. Moneypuck.com has a handy tool called the “Deserve to Win O’Meter,” which runs 1,000 simulations of the game based on the underlying numbers. The Golden Knights won in 59.5% of those simulations.

It’s easy to shake the loss off as a game they feel they should have or could have won, but the “it’s still early argument” is gradually losing credence. If the postseason started today, the Golden Knights would be the second wild card team, but they would travel back here to take on the Blues. That feels like a suboptimal situation for success.

The Golden Knights were pretty good Thursday night. The problem is against the defending champion and the current Western Conference leader, they had a terrible 20 minutes, and pretty good the rest of the way just wasn’t good enough.

“I thought we had two great periods, the first and the third, but the second wasn’t, obviously, nearly good enough," coach Gerard Gallant said. “A lot of missed chances, but we were loose in the second period and that’s what cost us the hockey game.”

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