The Vegas Golden Knights will try to extend their winning streak to a season-best five games when they visit the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday night.
The Golden Knights most recently defeated the San Jose Sharks 7-2 on Sunday for their fourth consecutive win, a feat they’ve achieved two other times this season.
The latest winning streak came on the heels of a season-high five-game skid.
“We’ve stacked some wins together,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said. “I think the guys realized that, as we got into the second half of the year, we weren’t happy with where we are.”
Vegas has been without forward Brandon Saad the past two games because of an undisclosed injury, and he will miss his third straight against the Kings. Forward William Karlsson has been sidelined since Nov. 8 because of a lower-body injury, and he’s not close to returning. Vegas also lost goalie Carter Hart to a lower-body injury last Thursday against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
“We talked about it the other day, like some of the good things we’ve done with different people in and out of the lineup,” Cassidy said. “They’re going to take ownership of the team.”
Vegas forward Mark Stone enters on an eight-game point streak (seven goals, five assists), and forward Jack Eichel has a five-game point streak (four goals, three assists).
The Kings and Golden Knights have not met since Oct. 8, a 6-5 shootout win by Los Angeles in Las Vegas.
The Kings have struggled to string together victories this season, winning more than two games in a row just once.
Los Angeles had a chance to build off its solid 4-3 shootout win at the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday, but lost 3-1 to the visiting Dallas Stars on Monday for its third loss in the past four games (1-2-1).
“That’s a very bad stretch,” Kings defenseman Drew Doughty said. “The season’s not gone or slipping away, I don’t think. We have time to get this back and get on a roll and I still believe that we will, but we’re not trying to wait around or anything. We’re trying to win every game when we go out there.”
Doughty said the Kings need to be more desperate to score goals, especially when close to the net.
“If we could score some more goals, we would be winning a lot more games,” Doughty said.
Los Angeles entered Tuesday in fifth place in a jammed-packed Pacific Division, but only six points behind the first-place Golden Knights.
Doughty said he can’t help but notice the standings.
“We don’t really talk too much about it as a group, from our coaches, but we have it updated every day in our practice rink and we see the standings every day,” he said. “We’re very aware of how important these games are coming up.”
Kings coach Jim Hiller said the Kings just need to keep finding ways to secure points, something they’ve managed to accomplish in four of the past six games.
“You need the two points in Game 1 and, most often, you need them probably right down to 80,” Hiller said. “It’s a long season. You need to accumulate points and we’ll just keep working our way at doing that.”
–Field Level Media
