After dominating the headlines with their season-opening 12-game point streak, the Vegas Golden Knights find themselves on the other end of streak talk when they host the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday night in Las Vegas.
The defending Stanley Cup champion Golden Knights suffered their first regulation loss of the season on Sunday at Anaheim, allowing four consecutive third-period goals to the Ducks in a 4-2 loss. That snapped a streak of 20 straight games without a regulation loss (16-0-4) in the regular-season for Vegas dating back to March 28 when it lost to Edmonton, 7-4.
The Golden Knights also opened the season with seven straight victories before suffering an overtime loss to Montreal, the best start in NHL history for a defending Stanley Cup champion.
Now the focus turns to the Kings. Los Angeles opened the season with six straight road wins, the best mark in the NHL, and has won three straight overall. The six-game road winning streak is the longest for the Kings since they won eight in a row in 2014.
Los Angeles comes in off a 5-0 victory at Philadelphia on Saturday as Cam Talbot made 24 saves for his first shutout in a Kings uniform and the 29th of his career.
“The win is what’s really important. The shutout is just an added bonus as far as I’m concerned,” Talbot said. “Guys did a great job locking down the third period, didn’t give them anything really, managed the game really well. Just a byproduct of that.”
Anze Kopitar scored the 399th goal of his career, Quinton Byfield had three assists and Arthur Kaliyev and Trevor Moore each had a goal and an assist in the win. Kopitar needs one more goal to become the fourth player with 400 goals in Kings history, joining Luc Robitaille (557), Marcel Dionne (550) and Dave Taylor (431).
The loss at Anaheim came less than 24 hours after the Golden Knights had blitzed Colorado, 7-0, and was the third game in four nights for Bruce Cassidy’s squad. The Ducks had just five shots on goal in the third period but scored on four of them.
“I thought we started the game really well for a team that was rested and waiting for us,” Cassidy said. “I thought we were in a real good position to win the game and they had a better stretch of 12 minutes than us, and that ended up costing us. That’s the NHL some nights. You’ve got to play 60-minute games.”
With a two-day break, including a much-needed day off on Monday, before hosting the Kings, Cassidy expects his team to be recharged.
“I suspect the guys were not happy,” Cassidy said. “I know the day off is good to sort of kind of flush some of that, and then (Wednesday) night we’ve got a divisional rival that’s playing really well so we’ll have no trouble getting up for that game. … We’re going to be ready to go on Wednesday, and that should be our mindset.”
“It’s a good start to the season but you never want to lose and we can’t feel good about anything really,” center William Karlsson said. “Try to learn (from the Anaheim loss) and try to win the next one.”
–Field Level Media
