Shorthanded Golden Knights suffer shootout loss to Wild

By Justin Emerson

Thursday, April 1, 2021 | 11:44 p.m.

If Wednesday night wasn’t tough enough on the Golden Knights, which lost a forward to a late scratch and saw another ejected, Thursday upped the ante even more.

The Golden Knights lost Chandler Stephenson to a three-game suspension for his elbowing major while Ryan Reaves remained out with a lower-body injury against the Wild. Because of how tight Vegas is up against the salary cap, it couldn’t bring in replacements and played the whole game with only 10 forwards.

And naturally, with a short bench in a back-to-back situation, the game went as long as possible with a shootout ultimately needed for the Wild to outlast the Golden Knights 3-2 at T-Mobile Arena.  

 “It’s not ideal to have to start that way,” forward Reilly Smith said. “I think Minnesota’s a good transition team and it kind of got turned into playing their style of game today, even with the circumstance.”

Seven Golden Knights, including six forwards, registered season highs in time on ice. Defenseman Alex Pietrangelo played a game-high 29:45, including 13:07 in the third period and overtime. Mark Stone led all forwards with 25:04 of ice time and nine players spent 20 minutes or more on the ice.

William Karlsson (24:01), Max Pacioretty (23:09), Jonathan Marchessault (23:08), Tomas Nosek (17:50) and Nicolas Roy (17:31) were the others to post season- highs in ice time. 

The Golden Knights more or less shifted to playing three lines, utilizing Keegan Kolesar as an extra and playing him for a team-low 7:21. He jumped in to replace players who coach Pete DeBoer saw had extended shifts and managed three shots on goal, including one that would have gone in had it not been for a highlight-reel save from Minnesota goalie Cam Talbot.

 “I thought (Kolesar), when he got in there with whoever we stuck him in with did a good job creating some energy,” DeBoer said.

DeBoer called playing with 10 forwards a “non-issue” in regard to the outcome of the game. And maybe he was right: Players might have been on the ice more than they’ve been all year but they didn’t look fatigued.

The Golden Knights welcomed a high-energy game that saw 35 shots on goal from each side and never faded even after 65 minutes of action.

In fact, the Golden Knights seemed to thrive as the game went on. Brayden McNabb scored his first goal of the season — and first in 66 games dating back to Nov. 21, 2019 — in the third period and the only goal allowed after the first was on a 4-on-3 penalty kill.

Overtime belonged to Vegas, bolstered by a 4-on-3 power play of its own, but it couldn’t beat Talbot for a game-winner.

The game was high-flying, and it was solely strong efforts from both goaltenders that allowed the under 5.5 goals to cash at sports books. The teams combined for nearly seven expected goals, according to Natural Stat Trick, but Talbot and Robin Lehner stifled several would-be scores.

That continued early in the shootout, which Lehner started by knocking away an attempt from Mats Zuccarello with his back foot. But then Kevin Fiala narrowly beat him on the Wild’s second attempt and the Golden Knights were not able to match the goal.

“It’s a tough one to swallow.” McNabb said. “You always want the two points but big that we got one.”

 Coupled with Wednesday’s loss to the Kings, the last two games marked the first time under DeBoer that Vegas lost two games in a row at home. Since he took over on Jan. 15, 2020, the Golden Knights are 22-4-3 at T-Mobile Arena, an .810 points percentage that rates as the best in the NHL in the span. They are 14-3-2 at home this year.

 “I don’t remember all the wins, but I can tell you we probably won a few of those games and didn’t play nearly as well as we did tonight,” DeBoer said. “I really liked our effort, I really liked our game. We got contributions from everyone tonight. The crowd was great, it was just one of those nights we just didn’t stick the puck in the net.”