While most of the Golden Knights rode off for vacation, Gerard Gallant, Marc-Andre Fleury, and James Neal headed to Tampa Bay to represent Vegas in the All-Star Game.
Tonight was the Skills Competition, and Fleury, who topped Pekka Rinne with his 14 consecutive stops in Save Streak, stole the show with his flair.
Tomorrow, Gallant, Fleury, Neal, and the rest of the Pacific Division All-Stars take on the Central at 12:30 PM PST. The winner of that game will battle the Metropolitan or the Atlantic at 2:30 PM for a winner-take-all $1 million dollar prize.
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The New York Islanders became the first team to sweep the Western Conference-leading Vegas Golden Knights in a season series with a 2-1 victory on Thursday night. In doing so, did they execute a Vegas-beating blueprint which other teams will follow?
Winning Play
The Knights suffered from a lack of precision for most of the night -- botched passes stall transition and lead to turnovers.
It's hard to say if Colin Miller's pass was too hot for David Perron to handle or if Perron just missed his tap to Erik Haula, who was coming from behind with speed. Regardless, the puck goes back the other way.
"We weren’t as crisp as we usually are," said Gerard Gallant. "We mishandled a lot of pucks and we weren’t as sharp as usual."
Miller gets another chance to break out, but it looks like the puck skips away just as the second-layer forecheck (Mathew Barzal) arrives. From there, coverage is an issue, chiefly Neal failing to mark Jordan Eberle in the high slot. After the game, Neal took personal responsiblity for this lapse.
It's a small thing, but when Cody Eakin is not making the easy play with Tanner Fritz draped over him -- say, a pass to Brad Hunt -- then attempts a long bomb to Alex Tuch -- that's a man and a team playing with a lot of confidence.
It didn't work, but in my mind, it speaks to Gallant's aggressive approach. I spoke with a couple scouts who were taking in the game, and they agreed that this was a play which not every coach would tolerate.
Minuses
In the second period, the Islanders were able to shut down the Knights in transition by clogging the middle of the ice, and from time to time, trapping.
"For the most part, they play a 1-1-3," noted Gallant. "They trap real good in the middle of the ice."
Arthur Staple, formerly of Newsday, remarked that New York isn't usually a trap team, suggesting a particular game plan for the transition-happy Golden Knights. Perhaps Vegas will see more of this as the season wears on.
In terms of controlling the center lane, Islanders color analyst Butch Goring observed, "[The Golden Knights] really dwell on mistakes or laziness by the opposition. They get up the ice in a hurry. They always have someone going through the middle of the ice."
Time after time, when the Golden Knights were breaking out, the road team would hustle back and hang somebody in the middle:
When Vegas was able to navigate through that by dumping the puck in, the forechecking results were not satisfactory.
"The puck touches weren't good enough. Our legs weren't moving. Or maybe we were moving our legs, but we weren't pressuring at the right time or right areas," noted David Perron. "We need five guys to really generate pressure. We didn't do that in the second."
"We put some pucks behind them, but our second guy wasn’t getting to those pucks," said Gallant. "Usually when we’re playing well, we’re first on the pucks."
With the forecheck's failure, New York would take possession of the puck. Critically, the Islanders managed the puck well, avoiding turnovers which would allow the Golden Knights to counterattack.
This was a stark contrast to the opening frame, when Vegas was taking advantage of New York's "mistakes or laziness." Doug Weight commented, "We got sniffing down the walls and losing guys behind us."
So if you can't force turnovers around the neutral zone or blueline and the opposition doesn't make glaring mistakes, what happens? Eventually, you do get the puck back, but guess what? You're starting deep in your zone, facing a set defense.
"We drove our legs, we got back to the slot, we drove our coverage, and I think we gave up one odd-man rush in the last two periods," said Weight. "Literally the last 11 of 20 goals I have watched Vegas score have been on a rush. That is a great thing for them, but it’s something we identified."
The Golden Knights will be back on Tuesday at Calgary.
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