Engelland helps Golden Knights edge Flames for 5th straight win

By Justin Emerson

Wednesday, March 6, 2019 | 11:30 p.m.

If you had to predict before Wednesday’s game who would score the game-winning goal, how many guesses would it take to get to Deryk Engelland?

“I wonder what the odds would have been,” defenseman Brayden McNabb joked.

Engelland scored at 9:30 of the third period, just his second goal of the season, to a break a tie game with the Calgary Flames and give the Golden Knights a 2-1 victory at T-Mobile Arena.

“I wouldn’t say I’m the offensive guy, that’s for sure,” Engelland said. “It doesn’t matter who scores the goal, it’s the end result that matters.”

It was his first goal since Dec. 6, a span of 37 games. His shooting percentage of 1.2 is the worst on the team, and he leads only Valentin Zykov and Erik Haula (21 combined games) in points.

But Engelland is seldom asked to score. He’s asked to play defense, and he did that admirably Wednesday night. It used to be Nate Schmidt and McNabb tasked with shutting down the opposition’s top line, but since Engelland and Schmidt were paired together three weeks ago, that responsibility fell on the new pair.

When Engelland was on the ice at 5-on-5, the Golden Knights were even in shot attempts against Calgary’s deadly trio of Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan and Matthew Tkachuk. The latter two had assists on Calgary's lone goal, but Engelland was not on the ice. 

“They’re top, top players in the league those guys, and they’ve had an outstanding year,” coach Gerard Gallant said. “We had to shut them down, and we did a pretty good job tonight.”

Vegas pulled seven points behind second-place San Jose in the Pacific Division and 10 behind first-place Calgary. The Golden Knights have won five straight since acquiring Mark Stone from Ottawa at the NHL trade deadline.

Engelland’s goal was a continuation of an offensive trend from the Vegas defensemen.

From October to January, 20 of the Golden Knights’ 156 goals came from defensemen, or 12.8 percent. Since the start of February, 15 of 44 (34.1 percent) have come from the blue line. A lot of that is courtesy of Shea Theodore, whose first-period goal gave him 11 on the season and five since the start of last month, but the change is noticeable.

Theodore said it’s nothing in particular that’s led to the change, just putting pucks on net. And sometimes that’s all you need to take out the Western Conference’s top team.

“On (Engelland)’s goal there was a lot of traffic and sometimes when you put it on net, you’ll find some holes,” Theodore said. “To really battle that out and grind out that one-goal game right to the end, it was a good feeling."

Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 33 shots for his league-leading 33rd win of the season. The 15-year veteran netminder has allowed just one goal in his last 228 minutes, 43 seconds.

Vegas improved to 14-5-2 against the tightly contested Pacific Division, and 3-0-0 in March. The Golden Knights are 5-2-0 against Calgary all-time, including a perfect 4-0-0 mark at home.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.