The Vegas Golden Knights head into Wednesday night’s game against the host Dallas Stars with a Western Conference-best 28 points and are tied for the NHL lead in wins with 13. But it’s fair to say the defending Stanley Cup champions have been leaking a little oil lately, especially on offense.
Vegas, shut out twice over 104 games in the regular season and playoffs combined a season ago, has been blanked twice in four games heading into the finale of a five-game road trip.
The Golden Knights started the trip with a 3-0 loss at Washington as Charlie Lindgren turned aside 35 shots. After bouncing back for a wild 6-5 victory at Montreal, Vegas fell 4-3 in overtime at Philadelphia on Saturday and then got shut out 3-0 at Pittsburgh on Sunday when Alex Nedeljkovic made 38 saves.
Since their season-opening 12-game point streak (11-0-1), the Golden Knights have gone 2-4-1 while scoring just six goals in the five losses.
“It’ll come,” said Vegas forward Jack Eichel, who hit the crossbar in both of the losses at Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. “It’s a long season, right? You’re not going to get bounces 82 games a year. We’ve just got to bear down on our opportunities when we have them.”
Eichel, who is second on the team with 19 points (seven goals, 12 assists), acknowledged the team has been troubled by its offensive problems lately.
“It’s frustrating,” Eichel said. “We’ve obviously been shut out twice here on the road, so we’ve got to find a way to score goals.
“Guys are frustrated. It’s not the way we wanted it to go (Sunday), or (Saturday). We’ve got a big game against Dallas coming up here. … It’s an important game for us.”
This will be the Golden Knights’ first trip to Dallas since they eliminated the Stars in six games in last season’s Western Conference finals. Vegas won Game 6 in Dallas, 6-0, to clinch the series as Adin Hill made 23 saves and William Karlsson scored two goals and had one assist.
“I know they’ll be excited because we’re going back in the building where we ended their season,” Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said. “We better be ready to play and not feeling sorry for ourselves. I don’t think that’s in our makeup, to be quite honest.”
Dallas, which leads the Central Division with 25 points, bounced back from an ugly 6-3 loss to visiting Colorado on Saturday to knock off the New York Rangers 6-3 on Monday night.
The Stars were up 3-0 against the second-place Avalanche before surrendering six straight goals in less than 27 minutes. However, Peter DeBoer’s squad flipped the script against the visiting Rangers, bouncing back from a 2-0 second-period deficit by scoring six unanswered goals.
“It felt a little like the Colorado game in reverse,” DeBoer said. “We came out in the second and third and played the way we needed to play against a team like that and got rewarded for it.”
Wednesday marks the second meeting this season between the two teams. The Knights won the first one 3-2 on Oct. 17 in Las Vegas in a shootout as Jonathan Marchessault scored the game-winner to start the third round. Roope Hintz had a chance to tie it, but his shot hit the crossbar.
