Defense helps Hill record first VGK shutout of season to close homestand undefeated

Veteran leadership plus tough defense helped the Vegas Golden Knights record their first shutout win of the season.

Vegas beat the Calgary Flames, 5-0, on Monday, Oct. 28 at the T-Mobile Arena. The shutout victory improves their winning streak to four games and puts an end to this four-game homestand.

“Sometimes your team gets hot at certain times, we might be going through one of those,” head coach Bruce Cassidy said. “It’s a lot of things clicking. Chemistry is falling into place for the new guys.”

The Knights offense has been on a tear at home throughout the first several weeks of the season. They currently average 4.8 goals per game at home and are now 7-0-0 at The Fortress.

VGK is sitting atop the Pacific Division standings with an overall record of 7-2-1, after defeating Los Angeles, San Jose, and Calgary over the past week.

“We’ve always felt pretty good playing at home,” center Nicolas Roy said. “We have a really good home crowd, we feed from the crowd.”

The Golden Knights will now travel west for a rematch against the Los Angeles KIngs on Wednesday, Oct. 30, with puck drop set for 7 p.m. Their previous meeting last week ended in 6-1 victory for VGK.

Now that this four-game homestand is over, Vegas will have to hit the road for three of their next four games. The Knights have yet to win a game on the road, currently at 0-2-1 away from The Fortress.

“Our guys played unbelievable tonight,” goalie Adin Hill said. “Nice to get the win and now head on to LA.”

Despite racking up 11 points through the first nine games of the season, defenseman Alex Pietrangelo finally scored his first goal of the season in the first period against Calgary.

Oddly enough, Pietrangelo didn’t score his first goal until the 10th game of the season last year as well. The Knights defenseman is now on a four-game point streak.

The goal came off assists from forwards Alexander Holtz and William Karlsson. Monday night’s game also marked the season debut for Karlsson, who missed the first nine games with an undisclosed injury.

The hot start VGK offense has now scored first in back-to-back games and in five of their last six games.

“The guys made it easier on me than normal, that’s forsure” Hill said. “It was a fun game, fun win.”

Captain Mark Stone added to their lead with a goal in the second period and push his season total to 18 points. Earlier Monday morning, the NHL announced Stone was its First Star of the Week.

The goal off of Stone’s stick came from an assist from fellow top line mate Jack Eichel, which happened to be his 100th assist as a Golden Knight.

The milestone couldn’t have occurred at a better time as Monday also marked Eichel’s 28th birthday. The center wrapped up his special day improving his season point total to 16.

Right-wing Keegan Kolesar scored his third and fourth goals of the season in the third period. All of his four goals have been in their last five games.

Roy assisted on both of Kolesar’s goals before scoring one himself towards the end of the game. Roy now has seven points through the team’s first 10 games.

By the end of the third period, Kolesar and Roy had both recorded three points in the period alone.

“From top to bottom, the whole team is confident in every line,” rookie right wing Cole Schwindt said. “I think it’s a special thing. For me, it’s just making sure that I’m doing the right things to help the team win.”

Schwindt assisted on two of their goals in the third period, which marks the first multi-point game of his career.

Aside from the aggressive scoring, the Knights’ defense was the staple in their first shutout win of the season. They finished last season with four shutout victories, with their most recent being a 2-0 win over the Dallas Stars in Game 6 of their first round playoff series.

Coming into Monday night’s game, Hill had lost two of his last three outings. He got back on track though and finished with 16 saves to improve his record to 4-2-0 on the season.

“I felt like I kept the game simple,” Hill said. “I didn’t try to do too much at any point. I just felt calm in there.”

Thanks to the smothering defense, Hill only saw just six shots on goal in the game’s opening period and saw even less in the second period. Calgary didn’t have shots on goal for the first 17-plus minutes of the second period before firing off three in the final 2:17.

“I think we might’ve had more blocks than they had shots, so that was pretty impressive by our guys,” he said. “Our defense did a great job fronting pucks tonight.”

By the end of the game, the Golden Knights had more than 20 shots than Calgary, 38-16. In the past two games, Vegas shot almost double the amount of their opponents combined, 80-42.