Early deficits becoming a problem for Golden Knights

The Golden Knights allowed five shots on goal in the last two periods and lost Thursday’s game.

If you tuned in after the first intermission and didn’t peek at the scoreboard, you would come away thinking the Golden Knights won by a handful of goals. Instead, they gave up a quartet in the first and at that point it didn’t matter much how good the second and third were. Vegas gave up at least the game’s first three goals for the third game in a row and despite battling back for the third game in a row, lost to the Los Angeles Kings 5-2 at T-Mobile Arena.

“Same old story isn’t it?” coach Gerard Gallant said. “The first period was awful. It’s embarrassing."

The first period was a “burn the tape” kind of 20 minutes for Vegas. The Golden Knights weren’t terrible for a good stretch of it, then watched the Kings score, score, score and score again, all in the final 6:20 of the frame. The Golden Knights scored twice in the second to tease a comeback, but that second goal was all they would get, despite leading in shots on goal 36-5 in the final 40 minutes.

If a first period like Thursday’s happened once, you can shrug it off. That was last Saturday’s game, where a 3-0 deficit in the first period turned into a 5-4 overtime win. It was an anomaly.

The problem that’s developing is that lately the anomalous portion was the win, not the early deficit, because it happened again in their next game. Vegas coughed up the first three goals on Tuesday, and this time there was no comeback to be found in a 4-3 loss. They certainly tried on Thursday, dominating the Kings after the first before giving up the fifth goal with nine seconds left once the outcome wasn’t in question.

The optimist’s take is that after the first period in all three of those games, the Golden Knights outscored the Blues, Penguins and Kings 10-4. The pessimist’s take is that a true Stanley Cup contender doesn’t trail 9-0 after three straight first periods. The realist’s take is that right now, something just isn’t working for the Golden Knights.

“It’s a 60-minute game. If you lose in the first period it doesn’t matter,” forward Reilly Smith said. “On a team like that on a back-to-back you have to jump on them quickly and we didn’t do that tonight. We deserved to lose tonight."

Yes, the Kings played last night, a 2-1 loss to the Stars in Los Angeles. And yes, the Golden Knights haven’t even had a road game in 2020. That’s why Vegas was as high as a minus-300 favorite coming into the game. By the end of the first though, it was a 7-to-1 underdog.

“They’re on a tail end of a back-to-back and we’re playing at home,” Smith said. “We should never lose to the Kings in a situation like that."

So what can they do? These are professional hockey players, some of whom have been in the league for a decade. It’s not like they’re going to change the routine that has gotten them this far. Doing so after a bad three-game stretch would be overreaction.

It’s a boring answer, but stay the course seems like the only reasonable solution. The Golden Knights did win that game against the Blues, which was their fourth in a row at the time. Even after back-to-back losses, they are 4-2 on the home stand and 13-7-1 since the Nov. 27. It’s a team that fought back to claim sole possession of first place as recently as last week.

“They do the same thing every game. I know, this is three games in a row. It’s not good,” Gallant said. “They’re professionals and they (have) got to get themselves ready to play. I’m not going to go in there with pom-poms and jump up and down. That’s not my job.”

The Golden Knights have a chance Saturday to salvage the seven-game home stand against the Blue Jackets. A win gives them a 5-2 stretch of home games, and taking the macro view, you’ll take that every time. But a fast start feels rather important, especially if they’re trying to make sure that the current three-game skid turns out to be the biggest anomaly of all.

“We have to win the next game. We put ourselves in that position tonight by losing,” Smith said. “We’ve had bad starts the last three, so we have to make sure that we change that next game.”