Golden Knights’ Defining Moments: Two straight first-place showdowns in Alberta

By Justin Emerson

Tuesday, April 21, 2020 | 2 a.m.

Turns out they might have been the last two Golden Knights games of the season, even though no one knew it at the time.

The Golden Knights headed north in the second week of March for a three-game swing through western Canada, which included a first-place showdown with the Edmonton Oilers. But first was a matchup with the Calgary Flames, a team quietly sneaking up the Pacific Division standings.

Vegas won both, thanks in part to two dramatic goals from Shea Theodore.

Over the next couple weeks, the Las Vegas Sun will look back at pivotal moments throughout the season. The series will cover everything from the obvious turning points to more obscure ones that went by without much fanfare at the time but turned out to be important.

Today we look at the last two games before the NHL’s pause, against the Oilers and the Flames.

Where the Golden Knights were

The two crucial games were on back-to-back nights — the Flames on March 8 followed by the Oilers on March 9. Vegas had just gotten shut out at Winnipeg to start the trip two nights earlier, and suddenly Edmonton and Calgary were closing in.

Entering the Flames game, the Golden Knights were tied atop the Pacific Division with the Oilers. Calgary was three points behind.

A regulation loss would have been crushing, as it would have resulted in putting Vegas at risk of falling to third place with a loss the next night in Edmonton.

What happened

The Golden Knights won both games, the first in regulation and the second in overtime, solidifying themselves as the class of the Pacific. Shea Theodore had the game-winning goal both nights.

He scored with 1:10 left to break a tie in Calgary after the Flames had erased a 3-0 deficit. The Golden Knights ultimately won 5-3 after Jonathan Marchessault added an empty-netter.

Then Theodore scored in overtime to beat the Oilers.

They were two big wins in a regular season that will probably end up being cut short, making them all the more important. If the NHL resumes right to the playoffs, the Golden Knights will be Pacific champions.

The two goals established a new career-high in goals for Theodore, too.

How it was received

Everyone seemed to understand how big these games were. The social media crowing was as loud as it’s been all season as fans felt the crescendo toward another division title. The tiebreaking implications of the Flames’ win were particularly crucial, and the effect of beating the Oilers was obvious.

How much it mattered looking back

There hasn’t been any action since those games, so the opinions formed immediately afterwards remain valid. Still, there were a few reasons why those games mattered as much as they did.

Those wins were huge for the Golden Knights, giving them a solid hold on the division. The March 9 game in Edmonton was Vegas’ last before the season paused, and it did so with the Golden Knights holding a three-point lead with 11 games to play.

The Calgary victory was equally important, as a regulation loss there would have given Vegas just a one-point lead over Edmonton, and only a three-point edge over the third-place Flames.

Every game’s importance gets magnified as the season goes on and the margin for error shrinks. These division clashes were critical, yet perhaps not as critical as the ones on March 31 and April 2 against Edmonton and Calgary, respectively, would have been.

It was important for Vegas to not only win the two earlier games, but also win them in regulation. The first tiebreaker in the standings is regulation wins, at which point Vegas held over Edmonton.

Theodore scoring with 70 seconds left gave his team two points, but also another tick in the regulation-wins column of the standings. Even though the Golden Knights couldn’t get the regulation win in Edmonton — and allowed the Oilers to earn one one point by reaching overtime — getting it in Calgary was huge at the time.

Looking back, these games served another purpose too.

Theodore was enjoying the best season of his career by any major measure before the season paused. In eight fewer games than last season, he had already set new career-highs with 13 goals, 33 assists and, of course, 46 points. He was 10^th among NHL defensemen in points.

He was also 6.4 goals above replacement, according to Evolving Hockey, to rank the best among Vegas defensemen.

Theodore took the step many hoped he would this year, going from a serviceable blue-liner to an elite one. These games were perfect encapsulation of that.

“Clutch” is impossible to define and shouldn’t be counted on in a quantitative analysis, but two game-winning goals in pivotal division matchups catch eyes more than empty-netters in blowouts.

These games were the jewels in the crown that is Theodore’s 2019-20 season. It helps that they came in the biggest wins of the season.