How the Vegas Golden Knights Keep Sabotaging Themselves

Seeing as the Vegas Golden Knights were one of the final four teams in last season’s playoffs, they were rightfully viewed as contenders entering the 2021-22 campaign.

They did move on from reigning Vezina Trophy winner Marc-Andre Fleury, but their top six and defense are intact, while they added Evgenii Dadonov and Nolan Patrick up front to supplement their attack. Maybe young forwards Peyton Krebs (17th overall pick in 2019) and Jake Leschyshyn (62nd pick in 2017) could contribute as well.

Through five games, they’re sitting on a 1-4-0 record and look more like cellar-dwellers than front-runners. To its credit, Peter DeBoer’s club is still flying around the ice and showing a serious thirst for offense. However, this inclination has evolved into an outright obsession.

It’s understandable to a degree.

For the last couple of seasons, the knock on this team has been that it can’t summon enough goals when it really counts. The focus, then, has been on ramping up its potency. To a fault, it’s bending over backwards to generate more opportunities. And with Mark Stone, Max Pacioretty and Alex Tuch sidelined with injuries, Vegas’ players are feeling even more pressure to find the back of the net. They’re trying too hard.

Vegas’ fundamentals have been tossed aside in favor of high-risk, high-octane hockey—and it isn’t paying off. Instead of applying a suffocating forecheck that delivers death by a thousand cuts, the Golden Knights are committing an endless stream of giveaways and effectively turning the blade on themselves.

Just look at these blunders from Sunday night’s 2-0 loss to the New York Islanders:

Those aren’t DeBoer’s Golden Knights. They’re sloppy and frantic. Individual players attempting individual plays rather than a cohesive, well-oiled machine.

The numbers aren’t any prettier. Last year, Vegas controlled 54.4% of the scoring chances (5th), 53.5% of the high-danger opportunities (9th) and 53.3% of the expected goals (8th) at 5-on-5 on the road to a 40-14-2 record. So far in 2021-22, the team has registered a 49.2 SCF% (19th), 47.4 HDCF% (23rd) and 48.0 xGF% (19th). The Golden Knights’ GF% has plummeted from 58.2 (2nd) to 41.7 (25th). That’s a staggering drop in performance.

While injuries have certainly ravaged the club, they only excuse its poor offensive results (30th in goals per game). DeBoer’s men should dig themselves out of this hole by remaining devoted to the process itself, but they’ve been guilty of defensive miscues and horrendous puck management that would sink any squad.

Eventually, those turnovers are bound to become scoring chances. They did on Sunday night:

Time after time, the Islanders feasted on Vegas’ unforced mistakes. The Golden Knights would wave too many players into the attack or throw sloppy passes into the middle of the ice, and New York—a team built on Barry Trotz’s philosophy of protecting the house—would flip possession and get downhill in a hurry. You simply can’t give such an opponent free opportunities.

Unfortunately, Vegas has been feeling generous early in the season. Its giveaway rate has spiked from 5.51 (second-lowest) to 9.40 (12th-highest) per 60 minutes. The Golden Knights are turning pucks over almost twice as frequently as they did one year ago. Meanwhile, their takeaway rate has only increased from 7.03 to 8.80.

In other words, opening the game up has placed them on the wrong side of the ledger. It’s no shocker that they allow the most high-danger chances, second-most expected goals and seventh-most goals per game.

Since their roster thrives on volume as opposed to pure marksmanship, this recklessness won’t be rewarded. This isn’t a team that outscores its problems. It can’t afford to deviate from the program. That much has been plain to see over the past few contests.

Watch what happens when they try to trade chances:

With Stone, Pacioretty and Tuch out, you can sympathize with Vegas’ desire to find offense by any means necessary. It’s going to be tough to score enough goals to survive organically.

Alex Pietrangelo, now the club’s de facto leader, has taken it upon himself to generate scoring chances. But much like the rest of the team, he’s overextending by jumping up at inopportune moments or attempting low-percentage passes when a simpler play is available. Fellow rearguard Nicolas Hague, who’s climbed up the depth chart following Alec Martinez and Zach Whitecloud’s injuries, is also showing his limitations as a puck-mover. Shea Theodore, for his part, has always been somewhat of a riverboat gambler.

The blue line has consistently coughed up pucks and therefore buried the Golden Knights behind the eight-ball. Four of their defensemen rank among the top 20 in high-danger opportunities against.

Pressing for offense at the expense of your three-zone structure isn’t a winning strategy. Vegas doesn’t need to step out of its comfort zone to get out of its rut. It needs to double down on its identity, tightening up its puck management and deploying a vicious all-hands-on-deck forecheck that will overwhelm the opposition. Outwork them as a group. Grind them into dust.

That’s how the Golden Knights became such a force in the first place, and it’s how they can navigate out of this injury-riddled mess. The hard way is the right way.

Looking for shortcuts is only going to drive you further away from your goal.