Expansion Golden Knights running out of goaltenders
Vegas’ vacation was NEW YORK » awful.
Not the movie — although that was also a sudden drop-off for a successful franchise — but the expansion Golden Knights, whose inaugural trip to New York was marred by yet another goaltender injury and back-to-back losses to the Islanders and Rangers.
After the second loss, one in which his team gave up a 4-2 lead after two periods at Madison Square Garden, head coach Gerard Gallant was clearly none too pleased.
“We’ve got too many veterans to be learning,” he said. “We’re a good team, and we’re a better team than that. We got to learn a good lesson tonight. That’s two nights in a row we pissed away points that we should have got, and tonight was a bad one.”
It was the first bad anything the Golden Knights have had in their brief existence, really. They came to the Big Apple with an 8-1-0 record, and remain on pace to be the best expansion team in National Hockey League history despite this week’s hiccup.
However, more difficult times could be ahead. With the club’s regular tandem of goaltenders, Marc-Andre Fleury and Malcolm Subban, both down due to injury, they’d been relying on Oscar Dansk, who had gotten off to a 3-0 start. Dansk, who was seeing his first ever NHL action with the club, left the game against the Islanders with an apparent lowerbody injury and was replaced by Maxime Lagace, who came in to make his NHL debut.
Lagace allowed four goals on 11 shots in the loss, and then surrendered another five goals in the loss to the Rangers. To avoid further issues, the Golden Knights are seemingly getting tougher in front of their own net.
“We play harder; we play stronger, faster and we don’t let anyone get to our goalie,” said forward Alex Tuch.
“I think what happens is, we have too many penalties and our goalies are put in bad spots with having to slide back and forth. That’s the second ‘man down goalie pull’ we’ve had to do because a guy’s sliding around too much, pulls his groin. I don’t know what Dansk did, it looks like it was a lower body injury, and you can’t have stuff like that happen. It adds up. Injuries are fluky most of the time, but sometimes it happens because of the way you’re playing.”
Tuch, who has three goals in his first seven games with Las Vegas, says he hasn’t seen anything like what the Golden Knights have had to endure with using this many goalies in this short of a timeframe.
“Lagace got put in a hard situation — for any goalie, it doesn’t matter whether this is his first NHL game experience or not — it’s hard for any goalie coming in there right after someone gets hurt,” Tuch said. “He had a few breakaways against and a few power play goals against. It’s hard. It is. You never know what can happen. We don’t know if another goalie is going to be ready, or we’re going to have to fly someone in. It’s next man up.”
Incredibly, that next man was 19-year-old Dylan Ferguson, who was recalled off of his junior team, the Kamloops Blazers, under emergency conditions. Ferguson was the last remaining goaltender the Golden Knights had under NHL contract who was healthy, and he backed up Lagace in Tuesday’s 6-4 loss at Madison Square Garden.
“It was definitely an exciting day, and it’s been an exciting 24 hours for me,” he said. “Getting the call that I was coming up here was definitely pretty surreal. I’m excited to be here and ready to go.”
Ferguson happened to be watching the game against the Islanders and saw Dansk get hurt, and wasn’t particularly surprised by his phone ringing shortly thereafter. Although it’s unlikely he’ll play — stranger things have certainly happened with this club and goaltending, however — he’s doing his best to learn from the bench.
“It might sound a little weird, but (Rangers goaltender Henrik) Lundqvist was somebody I grew up always watching,” he said. “Watching him in the net and being on the same ice as him was kind of cool…watching all the guys that are here and are going to stay here, why they’re here, their personalities and how hard they work all the time, that’s definitely something I can take back with me. They’re all role models to me, and I’m going to learn from them, so that’s probably the biggest thing I’ll take back.”