Island Knights
Gallant reflects on Golden Knights’ record-setting inaugural season in NHL
As head coach and assistant coach, Prince Edward Islanders Gerard Gallant and Mike Kelly have played a key role in the success of the National Hockey League’s newest expansion team. With the Summerside native and the Kinkora Regional High school graduate behind the bench, the Vegas Golden Knights set new records for a first-year team for points and wins and are now battling the Los Angeles Kings in the first round of the NHL playoffs. The Journal Pioneer spoke to the pair recently.
It has been a season to remember for the Vegas Golden Knights.
The Golden Knights shattered the record for most wins by a National Hockey League expansion franchise, and is now two games into its opening-round playoff series against the Los Angeles Kings.
“It’s obviously very positive, everything that has gone on this year, winning the Pacific Division,” reflected Golden Knights head coach and Summerside native Gerard (Turk) Gallant in a phone interview with the Journal Pioneer. “It has been an outstanding year for our team and our organization. “Everything has been perfect, and we obviously hope the playoffs go as well as the regular season.”
The Golden Knights compiled a record of 51-24-7 (wonlost-overtime losses) en route to finishing third overall in the very tough Western Conference, behind only the Nashville Predators (53-18-11) and Winnipeg Jets (52-20-10). Gallant admitted the Golden Knights have exceeded expectations in Year 1.
“I would say so, everybody, including coaching staff, players, management,” reaffirmed Gallant, who is the favourite to win the Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year. “To be truthful, it’s an expansion team, but the expansion rules were real good to us, and we got a lot of good hockey players.
“After the first 10 games of the regular season, we knew we had a real good hockey team. It wasn’t like the old-time expansion teams. We got a lot of good talent, a lot of good players and we earned a lot of these wins this year. It was a lot of fun.”
Fast start
While the Golden Knights got off to an 8-1 start to the regular season, including three overtime wins, most people expected the first-year team to come back to reality. However, that never happened.
Was there a point in the season that Gallant and Co. look back on as a turning point that convinced the organization they may have something special on the go?
“Definitely,” answered Gallant, who reached the milestone of 200 career coaching wins in the NHL earlier this season. “There was a weekend we had back-to-back road games in Nashville and then in Dallas.
“That was probably halfway through the season, and we went in both those buildings and we got two wins in both of those games.”
The Golden Knights were also without No. 1 goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury for those two games, but Malcolm Subban made a career-high 41 saves and Reilly Smith scored the only goal in a six-round shootout in a 4-3 shootout win over Nashville on Dec. 8. The following night, the Golden Knights scored three goals in 3:37 to take a 4-1 lead en route to a 5-3 win over Dallas. Those two wins improved the Golden Knights to 19-9-1.
“That was the time we said, ‘We have a good hockey team here,’” said Gallant, who was hired by the Golden Knights on April 13, 2017. “We said if we play that same way with that same intensity and talent level, we can beat anyone.
“That was the perfect weekend for us. That was probably the weekend where we said, ‘You know what, we’ll see what happens here, but we like our chances.’”
Gallant, who enjoyed a very
solid playing career, has been lauded for is his willingness to play four lines regularly, and trust his players.
“The biggest thing with our team is we have a lot of fun, and we come to work every day,” said Gallant, 54. “We don’t play our best game every night, but we have a chance to win every night. It’s a solid team effort.
“One night it’s the goaltending, the next night it’s the defence scoring some big goals and we have a lot of depth through our forward crew. Everybody chips in with our hockey team, it’s not one line or one goalie, it’s a group effort every night and every time we win.”