Golden Knights good guy Nick Holden gets his due in Stanley Cup playoffs

By Justin Emerson

Friday, May 21, 2021 | 6:45 p.m.

ST. PAUL, Minnesota — Golden Knights defenseman Nick Holden was placed on waivers because of salary cap concerns at the beginning of the season. He wasn’t claimed.

He only played in 17 games regular-season games, and none since early April. 

And, yet, there he was Thursday night having a significant role in a playoff game.

Holden finally had his number called in Game 3 of Vegas’ playoff series against the Minnesota Wild, contributing two assists to help the Golden Knights take a 2-1 series lead.

It couldn’t have happened to a better guy, teammates say.

“It’s so much fun to play in playoff games, so to be able to get up for that game was real easy,” Holden said. “I’m comfortable in my game, so I wasn’t too concerned jumping in not having played in a while. For me, it was unreal to get back out there and compete and battle with everybody at this time of year.”

Holden certainly didn’t anticipate what his year would hold when he signed a two-year extension last February. He was a regular for the Golden Knights then, appearing in all but one playoff game last year and looking like not only a bridge to the wave of younger defensemen, but also a reliable piece on the blue line.

Then COVID-19 hit, wrecking the NHL financially, and the salary cap did not rise as it does nearly every year. 

The Golden Knights signed defenseman Alex Pietrangelo to an $8.8 million-per-year deal, and Vegas was so capped out that it played with fewer than the allowable 20 players 10 times in the regular season.

That made even Holden’s manageable $1.7 million cap hit hard to fit into the lineup. Vegas turned to players making closer to league minimum like Zach Whitecloud and Nicolas Hague to play almost every night, and Holden was placed on waivers at the beginning of the year and spent most of the season on the taxi squad. He did not play at all in the first month of the season, and before Game 3 had not appeared in a game since April 9.

“You couldn’t ask for a better pro with everything he went through this year,” coach Pete DeBoer said. “He dealt with a lot of different things that were out of his control and handled them impeccably well. He is right at the top of the list for popularity in our room, both as a person and a respect factor for how he’s handled his situation.”

DeBoer said Hague, who played the first two games of the series, looked “fatigued” after Game 2 and wanted to get him in a night off. So in went Holden for just the 18th time in Vegas’ 59th game of the season.

All he did was pick up primary assists on the game-tying and game-winning goals, including a nifty ricochet pass off the end boards that bounced to Patrick Brown, also playing his first game in over a month, for a tap-in goal to tie the game. Holden joked on that goal that geometry isn’t his strong suit and that he wasn’t playing the angles so much as trying to create chaos and seeing what would happen.

The Golden Knights are happy when any player chips in, of course, but it’s clear it meant more that it came from a guy like Holden. More than once this year, Holden could be heard in the background of postgame press conferences, chirping or encouraging his teammates or pelting them with various objects while they’re trying to conduct interviews.

Teammates Alec Martinez returned the favor Friday, poking fun at Holden for the Goofy shirt he wore to the press-conference podium. It brought a good laugh and showed how valuable Holden is to the Vegas chemistry.

“He truly is a consummate professional. He’s been dealt a hand this year, that with all the cap things, that is a pretty difficult situation to be confronted with,” Martinez said. “He’s handled it with grace and professionalism. I think there’s a lot of guys that I’ve played with in my career that wouldn’t have handled it the way that he did. I guess I’m really impressed and honored to be a teammate of his.”

Whether Holden stays in the lineup remains to be seen. DeBoer mentioned the last time the team rested Hague he came out firing the next game, so maybe he wants to go back to Hague, which could put Holden back on the list of scratches. 

If he’s in the lineup or not, he’s still going to be a joy around the locker room. It’s hard not to root for a player whose smile is matched only by the grinning Disney character on his shirt, busting out laughing with Martinez during media availability in a playoff series.

When teams talk about intangibles in the room, they mean players like Holden. His results were also pretty tangible in Game 3.

“He’s a guy that since I’ve been here I’ve developed a friendship with and a relationship as you can probably tell with us being kind of idiots in this press conference,” Martinez said as both laughed again. “To get an opportunity like this, to get in and to come up big and contribute that way is just a testament to him and his character and really his hard work and mental fortitude to stay strong during this and put himself in the best possible position he can to perform well in the playoffs.

“I couldn’t be more proud of him.”