Fighting for their season, the Kings stunned the Knights by taking both games of their home & away back-to-back.
2/27/18 Kings 4 - Golden Knights 1
While the highlight was Anze Kopitar walking Luca Sbisa, the real problem was the Sbisa turnover which turned into the 3-1 second period-ending dagger.
With ample time and space, instead of the safe play, Sbisa tries to go through two Kings up the wall to Erik Haula. Alex Iafallo reads him the whole time, intercepts, hands it off to Kopitar, and the rest is SportsCenter.
Sbisa did not play at all in the third period; he wasn't on the bench, so it appears that he was injured at some point.
Ironically, just minutes earlier, Torrey Mitchell tried a similiar "Oh No Baby! What Is You Doin???" pass:
Luckily for Mitchell, Jack Campbell iced the resulting William Karlsson opportunity. But Kings management noticed -- they were sitting behind me in the pressbox, and they were not thrilled with Mitchell's derring-do.
The lesson here is, if you're going to attempt a pass through multiple neutral zone layers, you better succeed, or the play is coming right back at you.
Pluses
Tomas Tatar made a strong first impression.
Look how he pushes back Drew Doughty with his speed. Great vision and pass by Cody Eakin too, who played a strong two-way game last night.
Here, Tatar brings out a whole bag of skating tricks.
Speed by Alex Iafallo (no slowpoke), agility to gain the line past Dion Phaneuf, stutter step along the wall to confuse Adrian Kempe.
The newest Golden Knight made some plays with the puck too, showing a willingness to work in traffic.
Tatar receives Jon Merrill's pass with his back turned to the defense, but keeps instead of worrying about getting hammered.
Then, he makes the extra stickhandle to draw three Kings closer toward him. This gives Tomas Hyka, who's coming down the left wing, a little more time and space.
Continuing with this theme, look how Tatar battles Phaneuf in front. Despite giving up six inches to the blueliner, the 5'10" forward doesn't back down and uses his quickness to beat the giant to the puck.
Tatar managed to lead everybody with a sparkling 89.47 5v5 Corsi For % and 100.0 Scoring Chances For %.
Minuses
The Knights kept hurting themselves.
Besides the Sbisa gaffe, a careless Ryan Carpenter reset to the defense became a Kyle Clifford one-timer score. Then, Tyler Toffoli jumped on an awkward Deryk Engelland-Reilly Smith exchange at the blueline before blowing it by Maxime Lagace.
Lagace admitted, "Good shot, but those are the type of shots you want to stop."
Besides these unforced errors, Gallant also emphasized a lack of presence in front of Campbell:
We didn’t compete hard enough in the blue paint and we didn’t get any chances. The week before we scored 13 goals in two home games because we got in the blue paint and we didn’t do that tonight. It looked like our team was tired.It looked like our team was tired and that’s not an excuse, they had the same travel schedule as we have. They just looked like they had more jump than we had.
And of course, Jeff Carter sealed the game with a 5-on-3 marker after Ryan Reaves was penalized for roughing Doughty with about three minutes to go, then Gerard Gallant was given an accompanying bench minor because of his vociferous disagreement.
Gallant was still fuming after the game, "Did you see the penalties? We weren’t happy with it and that’s probably why I got my two-minute bench minor."
Reaves became the unexpected story of the contest with his rough on Doughty and his board on Derek Forbort. Whether or not you agree with the calls, two minor penalties in the last 10 minutes of a two-goal game is not ideal.
However, my concerns about Reaves have nothing to do with the penalties. I don't expect this to be a regular issue going forward, just law of averages.
On the balance too, I believe his physicality and ferocious forechecking can positively impact Vegas, even though early returns have been largely negative.
Actually, my issue with Reeves on the ice manifested itself the night before, during the tilt in Los Angeles.
2/26/18 Kings 3 - Golden Knights 2 (OT)
This was such a fantastic individual effort from Smith.
Forbort backs off because of Smith's speed. Then, Smith's hustle and strength beat Doughty to the loose puck.
"It hit Doughty in the head," revealed Smith. "I caught a good bounce."
Pluses
Despite the loss, Gallant asserted, "I loved the way we played tonight. We did everything well. We played a great game."
Smith agreed, "The team played well. We had a lot of chances."
Indeed, Jonathan Quick was a wall, stopping 37 of 39 shots, many dangerous.
On the defensive side, the Knights were excellent too, at least for most of the game. This is through two periods:
It's obvious why the Golden Knights are ahead right now. Los Angeles simply can't get to the high-danger areas. Vegas is smothering them defensively (despite being outshot 24-19). pic.twitter.com/msVRcVayn7
— Ryan Quigley (@RP_Quigs) February 27, 2018
This was a display of "hard to play against" defense, for sure.
The next day, Alec Martinez offered Jon Rosen some additional insight about the Knights' two-way game:
Getting pucks in behind them is important.I think they sacrifice giving up the red to stop you at the blue, so obviously getting pucks behind is really important, but the thing is, you can get pucks behind all day, but if you don’t have any speed carrying through, then quite frankly, it’s pointless.
I think that a lot of their o-zone play – I guess you could say this about any team – but a lot of their o-zone play begins in their own end. They transition probably the quickest out of any team that we’ve played against this year, and that’s both from D-to-offense, to offense-to-defense, and I think that’s the one thing they’ve been able to capitalize on, that they get it going the other way pretty quickly, and not in a cheating-type of cherry-picking aspect.
It’s just they play fast, and whenever they see success in terms of a battle or something like that in their own end, then their guys are jumping. It’s certainly something that we have to be cognizant of and just reiterate the importance of good gaps on the D, having a good F3 and staying above their speed.
Acquiring Ryan Reaves has been, to say the least, polarizing.
Personally, I'm not worried about the fighting, the penalties, or the physicality -- though it must be said, this hooking on Kopitar, which opened the door for LA to score its first goal -- was bad:
Nothing borderline about that -- you have to trust your defensemen here.
Anyway, Reaves has done a reasonable job of reducing minors over his career; they're still higher than you like, but that problem shouldn't be as glaring as it appears right now.
Instead, and like I said after George McPhee picked up Reaves, my primary concern is the winger's effect on the team's transition game.
McPhee said Reaves skates well, and he does, but that's not the only key transition skill.
This fumbled pass doesn't seem like much, but it gums up transition. Instead of the puck going one way, it's going the other way, at Marc-Andre Fleury.
Watching Reaves over the years, this doesn't appear to be an isolated mistake.
Sure, it's only been two games -- but right now, this is a wrench in the Vegas machine. It's not the penalties or the physicality. It's a guy who can skate fast, but may not be able to play fast.
***
++++I AM CURRENTLY LOOKING FOR ADVERTISERS! If you, or anyone you know would be interested in placing an ad here at HockeyBuzz, then send me a PM!++++