Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Analysis:

Robin Lehner not fretting recent struggles in Golden Knights’ net

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Steve Marcus

Vegas Golden Knights goaltender Robin Lehner (90) prepares for the start of the second period of a NHL preseason hockey game against the Arizona Coyotes at T-Mobile Arena Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021.

Few players in the NHL are willing or able to publicly analyze their own game in the honest way Robin Lehner does for the Golden Knights.

When the Vegas goalie has a good game in a loss, he’ll say so. When he plays poorly, he’ll also say so. And during what is his roughest stretch of the season so far, he was frank about his own performance.

“It’s been a little bit — understatement, it’s been too many goals. End of story,” Lehner said after Sunday’s victory in which he allowed four goals. I’ve been working hard, I know it’s going to turn. I’ve been through this stuff before.”

Lehner’s season can be split almost exactly down the middle.

He was spectacular in his initial 11 games, where his .919 save percentage and 2.72 goals-against average were good — just not a true indicator of his play. With the Golden Knights rating as one of the worst defensive teams in the league, Lehner was under siege each night and needed to play at his best to keep Vegas in the game.

According to advanced stats site Evolving Hockey, Lehner recorded 9.55 Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAx), which at the time ranked second in the NHL.

Since Nov. 13 against the Canucks, though, things started to shift. In his last 10 outings since the Vancouver game, he’s allowed 34 goals (3.64 GAA) on an .886 save percentage. His GSAx number is minus-5.1, eighth-worst in the NHL in that span.

It also included his worst week with the Golden Knights. He didn’t make it through the second period Wednesday at Dallas, allowing three goals on 10 shots (all on the power play) before being pulled for backup Laurent Brossoit. It was the first time he had been pulled from a game in more than two years.

Then on Sunday against the Wild, he allowed three goals on Minnesota’s first eight shots of the game, running it up to six goals allowed on his last 18 shots faced, a save percentage of .667. He settled in after that and Vegas defeated the Wild 6-4, although the fourth goal he allowed deflected off his glove and into the net.

“It ebbs and flows sometimes when it comes to your bounces, but obviously it’s not been up to my standards as of late,” Lehner said. “We’re finding ways to win through this, and I know it will turn.”

That part is true — in his last two starts in which Lehner has allowed seven goals in four-and-a-half periods, the Golden Knights won both those games. If their goalie is going to slump and Vegas is still going to score enough to win, they’ll take that every time.

“We’ve been on the receiving end of his performance a lot this year, especially early,” coach Pete DeBoer said. “Over a long season there’s give and take there. I think some nights you’ve got to bail your goalie out and some nights he bails you out.”

That seems to be the opinion the Golden Knights have. They remember just how good he was early in the season, and know that this is part of the peaks and valleys of a long hockey season.

And Lehner’s track record suggests he’ll have no trouble turning things around. When he signed his five-year extension with the Golden Knights before last season, he was coming off a three-year stretch where he led the NHL in GSAx. He was overlooked in part because he spent those years as well as last season in a goalie tandem, and this is the first time in a half-decade he’s had the net to himself.

So naturally he’s going to have some bad games and they’ll be more amplified, especially by a Vegas fanbase still recovering from the loss of beloved goalie Marc-Andre Fleury. There’s a certain segment of fans who dislike Lehner simply for not being Fleury, exemplified by the cheers that rang through T-Mobile Arena when Lehner was pulled for Brossoit last week.

But if there’s one thing we know about Lehner, he won’t let criticism get to him. This is a man who professed during last year’s playoffs that he gets to the rink hours early to garner motivation from nasty messages on Twitter. If he seeks that out, a negative fan reaction likely isn’t going to get under his skin.

Lehner knows his game will turn around and he’ll return to posting elite-level numbers, because that’s all he’s done for years.

“He’s harder on himself than anybody,” forward Chandler Stephenson said. “He wants to win, and we’ll always be there to back him and he’ll always be there to back us. That’s just how (Lehner) is. He’s a guy you want on your team.”