Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Fleury dazzles but offense fizzles as Golden Knights blanked by Ducks

0211_sun_VGKDucks

Steve Marcus

Anaheim Ducks center Isac Lundestrom (48) celebrates after Anaheim Ducks left wing Max Comtois (53) scores in the third period of a game against the Vegas Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021.

Ducks Beat Golden Knights 1-0

Anaheim Ducks left wing Max Jones (49) falls overVegas Golden Knights defenseman Nicolas Hague (14) in the third period of a game at T-Mobile Arena Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021. Launch slideshow »

The Golden Knights are one of the best teams in the league, with the fifth-best goal differential in the sport and a comfortable lead in the West Division by points percentage.

But as Thursday’s game showed us, even a good team can have a bad night.

The Golden Knights mustered season-lows in just about every offensive category, including the most important one. Vegas was shut out for the first time this season and lost a 1-0 game at T-Mobile Arena for the first time ever, falling to the Anaheim Ducks.

“We just weren’t really feeling it offensively,” Vegas forward Mark Stone said. “We were giving pucks away, slapping it in, no forecheck. Just didn’t have enough jump to get pucks back and didn’t have enough O-zone time because of it.”

The Golden Knights only kept it as close as they did because of the play of their goalie. Marc-Andre Fleury made 27 saves on the night, and didn’t allow a goal until Max Comtois finally beat him with 7:42 left in the game.

He also made a save worthy of the highlight reels. It looked like Isac Lundestrom had him beat after avoiding the initial poke check, and was eyeing an easy tap-in for a goal. Instead Fleury reached across the crease and denied him with the glove, all while on his back.

“I knew I was kind of screwed on that one,” Fleury said. “Threw my arm back there trying to cover a little something, and I got a little lucky saving that one.” 

Fleury’s performance is doubly impressive considering the circumstances. He wasn’t supposed to start today as part of his every-other-game rotation with Robin Lehner, but Lehner was a late scratch Thursday. Coach Pete DeBoer said he tweaked something at practice and was hopeful to go, but couldn’t. He was listed by the team as day-to-day with an upper-body injury.

Fleury found out he was starting around 4 p.m., making it the first time Fleury has started back-to-back games, including playoffs, since Vegas traded for Lehner almost a year ago.

“Unfortunate to waste an effort like that,” DeBoer said. “He got the call late to go in tonight. It was a great effort by him and I know the guys feel like they let him down a little bit.”

The problem was Fleury didn’t get any help. The Golden Knights managed season-lows in shots on goal (21), scoring chances (14), high-danger scoring chances (4) and expected goals (1.36), according to Natural Stat Trick. Those all set new marks for the year by large margins.

One thing that was there was shot attempts. Vegas had 57, about middle of the road for the season, but fewer than half made it to the net. Anaheim blocked 25 shots, meaning more pucks were turned away by Ducks skaters than by the goalie.

“I looked up midway through the third period and they had over 20 blocked shots to our seven or eight and that makes a difference,” forward Reilly Smith said. “It’s hard to beat a team four times in a row and they kind of played with a playoff mentality tonight just to keep things simple and protect the front of the net. They just ended up with one more bounce than we did.”

As Smith alluded to, the Golden Knights had the Ducks number before Thursday. Vegas opened the season with two victories against Anaheim and coupled with a win Tuesday, was riding a five-game winning streak dating back to last season. The Golden Knights are now 13-3-0 all-time against the Ducks, the most wins against any franchise.

And sometimes that just happens. The Golden Knights are 8-2-1 on the year and lead the division by a point while holding two games in hand. They’re not going to be perfect every night, and on Thursday they looked more out of sorts than they have all season.

“I think it was a case of what we’ve been talking about since the beginning of the year: Beating a team twice is really hard and the desperation level of the team not to get swept in these situations is at an all-time high,” DeBoer said. “We saw a really desperate team and early in the game we didn’t match their desperation.”

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