Knights open road trip with loss in Philadelphia

Losing 2-1 to the Philadelphia Flyers probably is not what the Vegas Golden Knights had in mind when they started the first of their five-game east coast road trip Tuesday, March 8 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The loss now puts Vegas at 32-22-4 on the season with 68 points in the Pacific Division. Along with contending with the Los Angeles Kings and Calgary Flames in the division, Vegas now has to keep their eye on the Edmonton Oilers who have made up ground on Vegas in the standings.

The Knights will play again against the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday, March 10 in Buffalo as the team continues their five-game road trip.

The deciding factor of this game for Vegas was the first period. The Knights fell behind 2-0 by the time the horn rang for the first intermission thanks in part to goals scored by defenseman Justin Braun and left-wing Oskar Lindblom.

From there, Vegas was chasing the rest of the game. The team did pick up a power play goal off the stick of right-wing Evgenii Dadonov in the second period to trim the lead down to 2-1, but it would not be enough to complete the comeback.

Vegas head coach Pete DeBoer was very blunt and straightforward when assessing the game.

“We didn’t score enough to win the game,” DeBoer said postgame.

To give you an idea of some of the frustration behind the Vegas offense, the team recorded 48 shots on goal and only got one of them to find the back of the net.

“We need to switch the luck around a bit,” center Jonathan Marchessault said. “It’s not good enough.”

This means that Philadelphia goalie Carter Hart was a very busy man in net for the Flyers as he saved 47 shots on 48 attempts for a final save percentage of .979.

It was not quite as busy on VGK goaltender Robin Lehner’s end of the ice as the Vegas goalie saved 19 shots on 21 attempts for a final save percentage of .905.