Vegas Golden Knights: 4 bugaboos that proved to be the downfall in WCF
2. Invisible Offense
On a team with not many weaknesses or flaws at all, the biggest strength of the Golden Knights was its explosive offense.
Or, at least that’s what we all thought anyway.
However, after showing some cracks in the Second Round against the Vancouver Canucks after laying a goose egg in Game 6 and scoring just four goals in three games, the wheels completely fell off the wagon in the Western Conference Final.
The Golden Knights just couldn’t score against the Dallas Stars.
Despite boasting a superstar in Mark Stone and an elite supporting cast including Max Pacioretty, William Karlsson, Reilly Smith and Alex Tuch, the offense was pretty much non existent in five games.
It started in Game 1 when the Knights fired a blank and they were unable to solve the puzzle given to them by the Stars for the rest of the series.
Six goals in five games by Vegas forwards tells its own sorry story, as does the fact that so many of their big guns went missing for large stretches of the series.
Max Pacioretty didn’t light the lamp for eight games dating back to the Second Round, while Mark Stone had just the one goal in the entire Western Conference Final.
It also didn’t help that the defense failed to step up and provide offense, with only Shea Theodore a regular and consistent contributor.
But it was the way this offense crashed and burned that should raise alarm bells.
While Dallas goalie Anton Khudobin was great, his life was made easier by the fact that the Knights fired pucks straight at his chest or on his pads.
They didn’t pick or direct their shots, they couldn’t set up screens in-front of net and they were awful when it came to generating rebounds.
Khudobin had to deal with hardly any traffic in-front of his net and you aren’t going to be successful if you can’t create High-Danger Chances.
Dallas did a superb job of clogging the neutral zone, resulting in the Golden Knights creating just eight rush attempts, 15 rebounds and a .072 expected-goals-per-shot rate.
That isn’t going to get the job done and, while Vegas did dominate the shot clock and most possession metrics, it doesn’t matter a damn bit if you can’t finish your chances.
It is a concern going forward and the front office, along with the coaching staff, will have to figure out how to try and avoid what should be an explosive offense slumping so badly again, especially in the postseason.