The Vegas Golden Knights took a point to start their season-high-tying four-game road trip.
A night after rallying from a two-goal deficit in a 3-2 shootout loss to the Boston Bruins, Vegas will look for more points in a Tuesday visit to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the second half of a back-to-back set.
“We got a point. Now you move on to Pittsburgh and build on it,” said Golden Knights coach Ryan Craig, whose team has only one win in its last six games (1-3-2). “That’s our job now — is to build on it and get to (Tuesday).”
“All in all, definitely a step in the right direction for the way we’ve been playing,” captain Mark Stone said.
Getting on the comeback trail was not easy for the Golden Knights in Boston, as they fell behind 2-0 and played a forward short with Braeden Bowman assessed a major penalty and game misconduct for elbowing early in the second period.
Stone’s team-leading 10th goal and second in as many games got Vegas on the board before rookie Trevor Connelly added the game-tying goal with 12:37 left to extend the game past regulation.
“I thought our leaders did a great job of leading us,” Craig said. “We stayed with it. Even going down 1-0, we got through the kill. (There were) moments of the game where we were able to tilt the ice. I thought that kill did a lot to get us going.”
While Stone has been a longtime leader for Vegas, Connelly has done his part to make an impact of late. The 20-year-old is tied for second among NHL rookies with five goals, one shy of Boston’s James Hagens, whom he faced on Monday.
“Trevor took a big hit (from Boston defenseman Charlie McAvoy) in the first period but came back and scored a huge goal for us,” Stone said. “He’s a resilient guy. Good to see him get rewarded in the third.”
While the Penguins have found more points during a recent 2-1-1 run than they did in the eight previous games (1-6-1), the Montreal Canadiens rattled off three second-period goals and beat them 5-4 on Saturday.
Defenseman Erik Karlsson put Pittsburgh up 1-0 only 2:08 in, but Montreal responded with two goals in a 24-second span less than a minute later and broke open a 2-2 game in the middle period.
“I know I sound like a broken record, but we didn’t play consistently,” Pittsburgh coach Dan Muse said after his team’s latest loss.
The top line of Tommy Novak, captain Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell scored three of the team’s four goals and combined for seven points, with Crosby’s assist on the opening tally marking the 1,112th of his career — the most with one franchise in NHL history.
Beyond that trio, though, the Penguins still are searching for steady footing, allowing five or more goals in five of their last eight games.
“Obviously, we’re battling it a little bit now,” Karlsson said. “We have, I think, from the beginning of the year to find consistency in our game.”
Injuries are not helping. Defenseman Kaedan Korczak and forward Evgeni Malkin did not practice on Monday due to lower-body ailments and are considered day-to-day, while forward Elmer Soderblom (upper body) is now week-to-week after missing the last two games.
As a result, former Bruins player Justin Brazeau is available to make his season debut after a two-game conditioning stint with AHL affiliate Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
“If you go back to the way he scores goals, he gets a lot of opportunities in-zone, but he also shows the ability to create and attack off the rush as well,” Muse said.
–Field Level Media
