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Perron in Tonight?; Theodore Dominates Game 2 OT Victory

April 15, 2018, 4:45 PM ET [6 Comments]
Sheng Peng
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LOS ANGELES -- This morning's skate revealed that David Perron should slide in tonight for Game Three; Perron skated with Cody Eakin and Ryan Carpenter. Tomas Tatar looks to be out.

(HockeyBuzz note: Tatar participated in practice fully, so he appears to be healthy.)

For Los Angeles, Drew Doughty will obviously return from suspension, while Jake Muzzin looks like he'll get back in.

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Without Drew Doughty, the Kings looked like -- wait for it -- an expansion team in their Game Two double-overtime loss to the Golden Knights.



Winning Play

Youth was served in OT, as the younger Knights danced around the older Kings.

In particular, Shea Theodore, Alex Tuch, and Tomas Nosek challenged Los Angeles time after time with their speed, their only rebuff a solitary Jonathan Quick, as Vegas sprinted out to decisive 42-20 5v5 Corsi, 18-7 Scoring Chances, and 5-2 High-Danger Corsi For advantages in extra time.

Erik Haula's game-winner was pretty much fait accompli.

It was Theodore, of course, who launched the Haula goal with a turn of his boot:


"It's a play that you're just trying to get any part of your body to block it," admitted Theodore. "It was just a perfect bounce off my skate.

Even more special, however, was his previous shift, where he literally tortured the Kings:



Theodore controlled play here for one minute and 20 seconds. 1:20.

In this time, he enjoyed one end-to-end rush, four attempted shots, one shot on goal, one scoring chance, two keep-ins, and nine puck touches.

To put those nine puck touches into perspective, in this clip, Tuch has five, Haula four, James Neal three, and Deryk Engelland three.

"I was just trying to make something happen at that point of the game," said Theodore.

Pluses



To give a sense of how much Vegas respects Doughty, especially when trying to carry the puck through the neutral zone and past the blueline, I tracked how the Knights attacked Doughty and his partner Oscar Fantenberg in the first period of Game One:

View post on imgur.com


(Here's a primer on targeting -- by targeting, I mean the Knights trying to gain the zone with a carry-in, as opposed to a dump-in.)

The Golden Knights went straight at Fantenberg four times more than Doughty when carrying in. Of course, that's understandable, given the fact that this was only the Swede's second NHL game since January 4th; he had been buried in the AHL.

But just look at the respect paid by William Karlsson here on this "target" of Doughty -- Doughty closes the gap on entry so quickly, the 43-goal scorer opts for a diagonal dump-in instead on entry.

View post on imgur.com


But wait, isn't this a Game Two recap?

Well, guess what won't be as available to Vegas in Game Three with Doughty (and Muzzin's) return? Gaps coming out, in the neutral zone, and gaining the blue will be in much greater demand.

This was a Game Two +, but Doughty and Muzzin are capable of changing that in a hurry.

Minuses

While the Knights dominated shots and 5v5 chances -- 56-30 and 26-10, respectively -- the Kings managed to keep them away from Quick's kitchen, for the most part.

Los Angeles seemed to cede the neutral zone to Vegas to protect the immediate area around Quick. This led to a lot of perimeter fire.

I thought that on occasion, the Golden Knights should've got the puck behind the defense and forechecked the Kings. This could potentially change the angle of attack -- some low to high or behind the net -- and get Quick moving and guessing more.

Here's an example of this, from late in the third period:



Nate Schmidt gets the puck in deep, instead of tossing a harmless shot from the wall. Tuch, Haula, and James Neal (who had a game-high 11 shots!) go to work -- immediately, Haula gets a putback chance off a Neal bid, then Haula goes low to high to Neal in the slot.

Jonathan Marchessault spoke to an attack which has pelted Quick with 87 shots, but only beat him three times.

Our forecheck is definitely a strength of the team

I think we need to change our angle a little bit when shooting. When you get tired, you shoot from the outside more. I should hold on more to pucks, go around their D more.

But it's the secondary chances, we need to get closer to him. Because he's probably the best goalie when it comes to shots on the ice.

He's a goalie who overchallenges a lot. So we need to make him move side to side more.

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