Yeah, that was a stereotypical January game for the Vegas Golden Knights: a little joy and hope, followed by a lot of nope!
The Golden Knights lost their second straight overtime game, this time to the Columbus Blue Jackets 2-1. It was also the fifth straight game that Vegas has scored the game’s first goal, in which they lost three of those. If there were ever a sentence that summed up this team’s 6-6-3 January, that would be the one. Anyway, here are my three takeaways from another hard-to-swallow loss.
A Samsonov Smorgasbord
Ilya Samsonov has had a…fairly miserable couple of weeks, outside of last Thursday’s win against the Blues. Tonight was pretty much a big mix of what we’ve seen from him this season in one big bowl. There was some good stuff and a good deal of trying to roller skate on water. Then there was the Columbus goal that Samsonov should’ve corralled or dove on. Maybe drug any Golden Knight in front of him down on it, that’d have worked.
Ultimately, it was slightly better than many of his starts in the month of January. But not enough to do a whole lot of good. Which cannot last much longer if this team wants to avoid more playoff heartbreak three months from now.
Failed Power Play Dooms Vegas
For all of the good Vegas has generated on the power play in the month of January, tonight was the rare instance of a power play ultimately dooming them. It was only 31 seconds after Hertl’s goal in the first, and there was a genuine opportunity to put a lock on the game. They ended up shotless and Columbus slowly built up momentum the rest of that period, turning it into the Fantilli goal at 18:34 and a more competitive game than this game could/should have been.
There were also a handful of posts and crossbars that the Golden Knights hit tonight, along with the tight restriction that is Goalie Interference. But you can look at that empty power play at 5:27 of the first period, and see where things went sideways tonight.
Hertl’s turned up to 11!
There weren’t a lot of bright spots individually tonight for Vegas. One of the two exceptions was Tomas Hertl who scored his 20th goal of the season, and extended his points streak to 11 games. If he could extend some of that good fortune to Ivan Barbashev (12-game goalless drought), that’d be just terrific…!
Next on the Marquee:
We greet a new and (fingers crossed) less ugly-looking month of February with a Sunday afternoon trip to Madison Square Garden to take on the New York Rangers at 3 P.M. Shesterkin basically stole the game the last time these two teams met, and have been as up and down as we’ve been ever since.
If there’s ever a perfect time to fully exorcise these January demons, Sunday and Tuesday night against the Islanders is the perfect time. It’ll take better goaltending and much more consistent play from this team to get there, though. Till then…