Lawless: Early Season Musings

Living life in the NHL with a constant glass-half-full approach can be a dangerous prospect. Too many moral victories add up to a wasted season. Over-reacting, however, will also gum up the works. A balanced approach to perspective is the ticket.

Players, coaches and management must always be self-evaluating. It’s critical. Enhance the good and fix the bad. An NHL season is a living organism, and it needs the right food, water, sunlight and maintenance to result in a playoff berth. Wins and losses must be viewed with the same scrutiny. Some defeats contain better play than some victories. How a team is executing its game plan and living up to its standard can be more telling than the final score of an individual game when judging the overall efficiency of a group. Do enough of the right things enough of the time and the win column will take care of itself.

Friday’s 4-3 loss to the Anaheim Ducks revealed a formula by which the Vegas Golden Knights can be successful. Friday’s game, which was really a tale of two periods, can be predictive. The first period was mostly a saw-off with the Ducks getting on the board late in the period to lead 1-0. The first 10 minutes of the second period saw the Golden Knights wallow through self-inflicted miscues which allowed Anaheim to score three more goals for a 4-0 lead.

The second half of the second frame and the third period were all VGK, and an example of how this team can bend the opposition to its will.

Vegas has a deep team with a mix of size, skill and experience. Blending those three things together will lead to success.

“We probably doubled our forechecks in the third period over the first two periods,” said Head Coach Ryan Craig. “It was just making better decisions at the offensive blueline. Using the ice that was there. And if it happened to be below the goal line, we got pucks below the goal line and forced their D to try and go back and break out. We did that in the third and early in the first and we got away from it in the second.”

Vegas can score off the rush. They also have the players to create offense from a grinding forecheck style.

It’s about consistently making the right choices.

“Probably just the execution. You look at their team and they have high-end players with high-end skill and if you turn the puck over giving them time and space they are going to make plays and they did,” said captain Mark Stone.

“As the game went on and you started to see some pucks go in for us, we were making their defensemen turn. You could tell by the shot clocks and the chances over the last 25 minutes were really in our favor. We didn’t cheat the game to get our chances. We just did what we needed to do to. We got pucks in, held on to them sometimes and go their D charging around.”

Vegas is now 1-1-0 and has 82 regular season games to go. They will venture out on the road for the next two, playing Sunday in Vancouver and Tuesday in Seattle before coming home for two against Toronto and Los Angeles.