Knights deliver home cooking for Reaves, Rangers

Thursday night marked the first time that right-wing Ryan Reaves returned to T-Mobile Arena as a member of an opposing team in his NHL career.

Reaves was traded in the offseason from the Vegas Golden Knights to the New York Rangers in exchange for future draft picks.

The game didn’t go the way Reaves and the Rangers had hoped, losing to the Golden Knights by a score of 5-1 Thursday, Jan. 6.

The win for Vegas put a halt to a two-game home losing streak and awarded two important points to keep their top seed in the Pacific Division. The Knights are now 23-13-1 with 47 points and hold a four-point lead over Anaheim in the division.

“That’s what good teams do,” VGK head coach Pete DeBoer. “They bounce back after an off effort with a real good game. I thought we kept our focus and did that tonight.”

The next game for the Golden Knights will take place Saturday, Jan. 8 at 7 p.m. Pacific as Vegas welcomes goalie Marc-Andre Fleury and the Chicago Blackhawks to T-Mobile Arena.

The game can be seen on AT&T Sportsnet in Vegas and fans can find ticket information for the game at AXS.com.

Thursday night’s game could be considered a get-right game for Vegas and particularly a get- right game for the misfit line of William Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith.

Going into the game, that line had been held in check the last handful of home games with the most amount of action coming from Karlsson in the Winnipeg game when he scored a goal and had an assist.

Marchessault led the charge for the misfit line on Thursday scoring two goals to add on to his impressive season totals.

It was also a warm return for former Vegas Golden Knights coach, Gerard Gallant. Gallant is now the head coach of the New York Rangers and much like Reaves, was received well by the Vegas crowd.

A notable Knight that played better than some may have expected was goalie Robin Lehner. Lehner stopped 19 shots on 20 attempts for a save percentage of .950 in the win.

“I felt pretty good. We’re working hard to get back and it was nice to get back and get a win.,” Lehner said after his performance.