Golden Knights hope ‘embarrassing’ loss to Avalanche the last of its kind

By Justin Emerson

Friday, Oct. 25, 2019 | 7:41 p.m.

You can argue the only thing that looked good Friday was the Golden Knights’ Nevada Day warmup jerseys. Because once the home team put on their game sweaters, it got ugly in a hurry.

The Golden Knights didn’t record a shot for the initial eight minutes of the game against the Colorado Avalanche and they pulled their top goalie for the first time in more a year. It appeared to be so bad that after the first period, Reilly Smith told the television crew it was the worst period of the season for Vegas.

Then, in the second period it got more ugly, as the Golden Knights’ one-goal deficit turned into a four-goal deficit. The end result, a 5-1 defeat to the Avalanche, was embarrassing, coach Gerard Gallant said.

“I don’t know where to start, really. It was an embarrassing game for our group,” Gallant said. “If you’re a good hockey team, you’re going to move on. You have to forget about it. We weren’t good at all.”

The Golden Knights had won three of four coming into the game, but those results could be considered deceiving. The truth is that the Golden Knights haven’t looked good in nearly two weeks, relying on strong goaltending to win a couple games on the road when the offense was stagnant.

Vegas hasn’t scored three goals against a goalie in the past seven games — a stat excluding empty-net and shootout goals. And even in those seven games, they haven’t had any scoring depth. With the exception on one goal from Nick Holden, the last time someone outside the top six scored was eight games ago against Calgary.

The problem with relying so heavily on your goalie is that even a future Hall of Famer can’t continually rescue the team from poor performances. Marc-Andre Fleury was tremendous in the first period, keeping the Golden Knights’ deficit to 2-1 where could have easily trailed by three or four goals.

“We haven’t been defending well at all,” forward Max Pacioretty said. “(Fleury) has been bailing us out, so this should be a little bit of a wake-up call.”

But the leaky dam burst wide open in the second, as Colorado scored twice more to force Gallant to pull Fleury from the game for backup Garrett Spark. Fleury faced 26 shots in 29:05 if ice time, and Gallant “pulled him to save him.”

Fleury is almost without question the reason Vegas has a record above .500. He entered the game with a league-leading 5.07 goals saved above expected, more than a full goal better than the second-place goalie, according to Evolving Hockey.

On the road trip, when the Knights went 2-1, he saved 60 of 61 shots against Pittsburgh and Chicago, allowing the Knights to hold on just long enough for the offense to steal two victories.

The Avalanche were just too much. Friday was their eighth win in 10 games, which is best record in the league. They fired 41 shots at Fleury and Sparks and held a 46-22 edge in 5-on-5 shot attempts in the first two periods when the outcome wasn’t cemented like it was in the third.

The Golden Knights are 7-5-0, a solid record by any measure. The issue is that just one of their seven wins have come against a team with a winning record. Their five losses have all been to good teams, but they’ve only kept one game within a goal and lost the other four by three or more goals.

The warmup jerseys were good. Garret Sparks’ new Vegas mask and pads were nice too, if we’re being honest. But the fact we saw Sparks’ gear at all on a day Fleury started and was healthy says all you need to know about this one.

“To a man, we have to look in the mirror and say, ‘Is this our hockey team?” Gallant said. “I don’t think it is. So we have to pick it up.”

Justin Emerson can be reached at 702-259-8814 or [email protected]. Follow Justin on Twitter at twitter.com/@j15emerson.