Vegas Golden Knights take five steps back in loss to Rangers

As has often been the case this year, the Vegas Golden Knights failed to take the necessary step forward after being dismantled by the New York Rangers on Sunday.

After winning four straight and carving out a five-game point streak, the Vegas Golden Knights had taken positive steps in the right direction.

However, and as they have done throughout the 2019-20 regular season so far, the Knights took five steps back on Sunday after being blown out on home ice by the Rangers.

Granted, all 31 teams will suffer a handful of bad losses during the course of an 82-game schedule, while the Golden Knights actually played okay and dominated large parts of the contest.

It was the manner of the loss that worried me, though, and there were a few concerning nuggets to take out of the game.

Firstly, good teams and contenders find a way to win even when they aren’t at their best, they find a way to roll up their sleeves and gut through.

Vegas couldn’t do that, though, and they seemed to cave after Artemi Panarin sent a snipe past Malcolm Subban at 11:03 in the first, with Chris Kreider going on to score 15 seconds later.

And, from there, the Golden Knights couldn’t stop the Blueshirts as they scored on three more occasions to secure a big win on the road.

Malcolm Subban, who was starting for the seventh straight game, had an off-night and that is perhaps understandable after he’s been standing on his head for so long.

The offense gave it their all but just came up against a red hot goalie in Alexandar Georgiev, who stopped all 38 shots that was fired in his direction.

But, as a team, it was just a disappointing effort given all the huge strides made over the last couple of weeks.

The Knights coughed up 13 Giveaways and just played bad defense at times, while they also lost the special teams battle.

They went 0-for-4 on the power play which just isn’t going to get the job done, while they allowed two goals on five power play attempts by the Rangers.

Plus, to add insult to injury, the Knights also lost rookie Cody Glass who struggled to leave the ice after taking an elbow to the head from Rangers forward Brendan Lemieux.

It was just a bad night at the office and we were given another glimpse of what has been the biggest bugaboo of this team this year, which is a severe lack of inconsistency.

Before winning four games in a row they had only won two consecutive games, and the Golden Knights need to carve out longer runs than that if they want to take control of the Pacific Division.

It is important to not get too carried away given that there are a plethora of ups and downs in every season, but this loss to the New York Rangers team probably summed up the season so far.

They make so much progress but then put up an absolute stinker to hurt themselves, and it was a sixth loss on home ice which isn’t great either.

Overall, the sky is still the limit for the Vegas Golden Knights but Sunday’s loss represented five steps back and this team really need to add some consistency to their game if they want to fulfill their potential this year.