Looking to salvage something from a four-game road trip that has not gone to plan, the Vegas Golden Knights at least will be on their preferred side of the country when they visit the Anaheim Ducks on Wednesday night.
After a 6-3 loss at Carolina to open the trip, the Golden Knights absorbed a pair of defeats in the Sunshine State, falling 5-4 to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday and 4-2 to the Florida Panthers on Saturday in a rematch of last season’s Stanley Cup Final that Vegas won in five games.
The post-Christmas schedule resumes Wednesday as Vegas pulls into Anaheim with a little motivation. When the teams met at Anaheim on Nov. 5, the Ducks ended the Golden Knights’ season-opening 12-game point streak.
Vegas is just 10-9-4 dating back to that first defeat after opening its title defense on an 11-0-1 run.
Now, the Golden Knights will try to avoid their first four-game losing streak of the season after Jiri Patera gave up four goals against the Panthers in his sixth career game. Patera made his second consecutive start with Logan Thompson (upper body) out of action.
Mark Stone and Pavel Dorofeyev each scored goals for Vegas on Saturday. Even with another road game Wednesday, the Golden Knights already have hit the reset button.
“It’s probably a good time for the (Christmas) break,” Stone said. “This wasn’t our best road trip by any means. We didn’t play enough 60-minute hockey in those three games, but we’ve been through adversity before and we’ve got to come out of the other side of the break rested and recovered.”
The Ducks are nothing like they were the last time they met the Golden Knights. They earned their sixth consecutive victory that night, but things have taken a drastic turn since. Defenseman Jamie Drysdale was already out with an injury and dynamic forward Trevor Zegras was off to a slow start. Zegras would depart with his own injury two games later.
Both are back now, with Drysdale returning Thursday in a 3-0 loss to the Calgary Flames and Zegras showing his flair for the dramatic in his return Saturday during a 3-2 loss to the Seattle Kraken.
Zegras scored his third career lacrosse-style goal in the game, skating behind the Kraken net while positioning the puck on his stick blade before reaching around to score into the top left corner. It was just his second goal in 13 games this season.
After the game, the talk was almost as much about Zegras’ sleight of hand as it was about Anaheim’s 15th loss in 18 games.
“(Zegras) was terrific,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin said. “It’s amazing, he missed two months and he was arguably the most visible guy on the ice.”
Anaheim did have its chances to tie late, with the Zegras goal allowing the Ducks to pull within 3-2 and think about what could have been had they pushed across one more goal, instead of wallowing in what has been going wrong. Anaheim will take positives where it can get them.
“Eventually, those are going to start going in and we’re going to start winning these games,” Zegras said. “Obviously watching the last 20 (games while injured) and (Saturday), it’s frustrating because we’re in all of these games.”
–Field Level Media
