Losing streak extended to three for Vegas versus Pittsburgh

The road has not seemed to get any easier for the Vegas Golden Knights as they fell to the Pittsburgh Penguins by a final score of 5-2 Friday, March 11.

It now marks three straight losses for the team as they have yet to pick up a point on this road trip.

“It’s a challenge, but that’s the ups and downs of a season,” head coach Pete DeBoer said. “We’ve got a lot of hockey left.”

With the loss, the Vegas Golden Knights remain at 68 points on the season with a 32-24-4 record. Each loss has allowed teams to gain ground on Vegas in the Pacific Division standings and has slowly started moving the Knights outside of the playoff picture.

To get a playoff spot, Vegas needs to either finish inside the top 3 of the division or be one of two teams with the most points out of the remaining teams in the Western Conference.

The next time Vegas will touch the ice in a game-setting is Sunday, March 13 as they go to Columbus to face the Blue Jackets in what will be the fourth of this five-game road trip.

Puck drop is set for 4 p.m. PST and can be seen on AT&T Sportsnet in Las Vegas.

As the Knights have done on a few occasions on this road trip, they fell behind early and were playing catch-up the rest of the way. Defenseman Mike Matheson and center Jeff Carter put the first two goals on the board for Pittsburgh late in the first and early in the second period to give the Penguins a 2-0 lead with just under 17:30 left to play in the second period.

Vegas responded before the end of the period with goals from center Jack Eichel and Alex Pietrangelo to tie it up at two going to the final 20 minutes of play.

Vegas lost all the momentum they gained in the third period when Pittsburgh struck for three more goals off the sticks of defenseman Mark Friedman, right-wing Bryan Rust and center Evan Rodrigues to secure the 5-2 win for the Penguins.

“We need to be better,” Pietrangelo said. “Simple as that.”

Center Jonathan Marchessault wants to see some of the previous year’s work ethic show up over the remainder of this season.

“We gotta get back to our identity,” he said. “It goes back to five years ago, and we had no team, but we were working. We got to work. We got to put our work boots on and just do what we do best as an organization and as a team.”

It was not one of the better games for VGK goalie Laurent Brossoit as he saved 28 shots on 32 attempts for a final save percentage of .875.

Pittsburgh’s Tristan Jarry finished the night with 40 saves on 42 attempts for a final save percentage of .952.