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After coming off an overtime win over the Boston Bruins Thursday night, the Vegas Golden Knights failed to pick up back-to-back wins as they were defeated by the Calgary Flames 3-1 on Saturday, Jan. 13 inside the T-Mobile Arena.
“I didn’t see anything wrong with the structure, what I saw was guys getting out-willed in front of the net,” head coach Bruce Cassidy said. “They’re in position. They’re right there. If they’re not there, that’s one thing. We kept chasing it and never caught it.”
Vegas is now 24-14-5 on the season with 53 points in the Pacific Division. The Golden Knights sit eight behind the Vancouver Canucks for the top spot in the division.
The VGK will continue their homestand on Monday, Jan. 15 as it welcomes in the Nashville Predators for a meeting inside the T-Mobile Arena. Puck drop is set for 3 p.m. This will be the first of three scheduled meetings between Vegas and Nashville.
It has now been over a month since the Golden Knights have been able to win back-to-back games. Dec.10 and Dec.12 was the last time Vegas won two games in a row. Those games were part of an eventual four-game win streak.
“I thought we played a pretty good game,” left winger Jonathan Marchessault said. “At the end of the day, we have to find ways to score goals. It was unfortunate that we didn’t have a lot of guys in front of their goalie [Jacob Markstrom], he played a really good game tonight.”
Markstrom came up with 31 saves on 32 shots faced for a final save percentage of .969 on his way to being recognized as the first star of the game.
On the other side of the rink, it was not as good of a night for goalie Logan Thompson who had a lot of traffic in front of the net and was put in some difficult situations to make saves, some of which led to goals for Calgary.
Thompson finished the game with 23 saves on 26 shots faced for a final save percentage of .885 in the loss.
Saturday was also the third game in a row that Vegas has failed to score a goal in the first period. Cassidy has talked at length this season about wanting to see his group get off to good starts. The Golden Knights have scored three goals during that three game stretch and have been outscored 8-3.
“I think anyway you look at it, you don’t wanna lose hockey games,” defenseman Zach Whitecloud said. “It’s frustrating. You’re not going to sit there and tell yourself the good reasons why you lost or the things you could have done better, you got to look at those no matter if you win or lose. It’s frustrating either way. We don’t play this game to lose hockey games and it feels the same no matter what.”
Center Chandler Stephenson was the lone Golden Knight who was able to light the lamp when he scored with 11:06 to go in the game. It was Stephenson’s seventh goal of the season.
It appeared that the Knights might have one last push after the Stephenson goal to try and get back into the game including some good quality scoring chances that were shut down by Markstrom.