Knights split road trip, lose to Arizona

The Vegas Golden Knights split their two game road trip against San Jose and Arizona with a win against the Sharks and most recently, a 3-1 loss to the Coyotes.

With the loss, Vegas now moves to 29-19-4 on the season and now sits in third in the Pacific Division behind Calgary and Los Angeles.

Vegas currently has 62 points and trails LA by three points and Calgary by four points.

“We don’t have a lot of time to feel sorry for ourselves,” head coach Pete DeBoer said. “I thought we played well defensively and I thought our goalie played [well] enough to win tonight but we got one goal from our fourth line.”

Vegas has a quick turnaround for their next game as they’ll be back inside the Fortress on Saturday, February 26th for a rematch with the Colorado Avalanche. Puck drop is set for 7 p.m. and can be seen on AT&T Sportsnet in Las Vegas.

It was another strong start from the Golden Knights in this one as left-wing William Carrier scored the game’s first goal to give Vegas the early 1-0 lead with just under nine minutes to go in the first period.

That lead for Vegas only lasted for 3:13 as Arizona’s Shayne Gostisbehere scored the equalizer later in the period.

Center Nick Schmaltz of the Coyotes scored the other two goals for Arizona in the third period to seal up the 3-1 win.

With this win, Arizona improves to 14-34-4 on the year which still has them in last place of the Central Division with 36 points.

Goalie Laurent Brossoit got the nod for Vegas between the pipes and finished with 29 saves on 31 attempts for a final save percentage of .935.

Arizona’s Scott Wedgewood finished with 43 saves on 44 attempts for a final save percentage of .977.

One of the more alarming stats for this Vegas team might be that the Golden Knights registered 44 shots and were only able to produce 1 goal from those attempts.

“There wasn’t a lot to like,” forward Reilly Smith said. “These are games that you can’t lose this time of year.”

Center Chandler Stephenson seemed optimistic about the rest of the season for his Golden Knights team after this one.

“We’ve had our fair share of time off in February,” he said. “Once we get in a groove and get our swagger back, we’ll get rolling a bit better.”

Arizona proved to be the more physical team in this matchup. They won the hits battle 41-17 over Vegas.