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Original Misfit William Karlsson made his season debut and immediately contributed to the recent stretch of home success for his Vegas Golden Knights in a big way.
Vegas dumped San Jose, 7-3, Saturday, Oct. 26 from the T-Mobile Arena in the second part of a back-to-back. It’s the first of 13 back-to-backs for this year’s VGK squad.
“Maybe we were just still with it from yesterday,” left-wing Tanner Pearson said. “We knew we maybe didn’t have our best game last night. So we got right back at it, which is always a plus for us.”
The win keeps Vegas undefeated at home through the first five games of the season. In total, the team is 6-2-1 overall with 13 points. It currently sits atop the Pacific division standings.
On Monday, Oct. 28, the Golden Knights will conclude their four-game homestand with a division meeting with the Calgary Flames. Puck drop is slated for 7 p.m.
“We’ve had one road trip so it’s easy to say we’re not playing well on the road,” defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said. “But we have a couple of road games here coming up so we’ll see if we can carry that momentum over.”
Karlsson played for the first time this season after missing the first eight games of the season with an undisclosed injury. He didn’t take long to get into the swing of things as he picked up his first point of the season on his first shift.
“It’s never fun to sit on the side,” he said. “It’s never fun to have an injury. To be back, it’s just happiness. Super happy to be back.”
The first point of the season for Karlsson came on a first period assist on Pearson’s goal. In the second period, Karlsson would light the lamp himself in the second period with his team short-handed. That would count as the first short-handed goal of the season for Vegas.
Karlsson recorded two points in his season debut on a goal and an assist with two blocked shots.
“I like to watch him play,” head coach Bruce Cassidy said. “That’s the simplest compliment, I love watching him play the game. He plays it the right way, he plays with pace, he can score, he can make plays — look at the shorthanded goal he scored. It’s 3-1, they get back into the game and he takes a bit of the wind out of their sails.”
The Golden Knights raced out to a 3-0 lead after the first 20 minutes behind first period goals from centers Jack Eichel and Brett Howden along with Pearson’s aforementioned goal.
At the time of Vegas’ third goal, San Jose had just three shots on goal.
“We played well,” Cassidy said. “[The first] w as probably our best played period of the season for whatever reason. I don’t know if it had anything to do with getting on the ice this morning and getting some touches.”
Howden tallied his first career two-goal game with his final goal being the one that pushed the home team to seven. He now has five goals on the season, four away from his career-high of nine.
“He’s scoring this year.,” Cassidy said. “Pucks are finding him in the slot and he’s finishing some plays on good passes but he’s still got to finish them. So far, that’s been good. That’s always kind of been [the thing], can he finish shots?”
Left-wing Pavel Dorofeyev posted a new career-high of three points on his 24th birthday.
Seven goals on the night was one away from the Golden Knights’ season-high of eight which was recorded in the team’s season opener. In addition, seven players recorded multi-point games.
Vegas averages 6.8 goals at home this season.
“I think it‘s an intimidating place to play from past experience,” Pearson said. “We feel comfortable here — on home ice, you kind of have to. To go far down the line here, you’ve got to be good at home.”
Goalie Ilya Samsonov earned his third win in four starts to improve to 3-0-1 this season. He held the Sharks without a goal in the first period despite a late power play chance that leaked into the start of the second.
The Golden Knights’ defense killed that power play en route to an 0-for-2 night for the visitors with the man advantage. In total, both teams combined to go 1-for-6 on the power play.
“I think a lot of our goals are coming from good defense,” Pietrangelo said. “I think we’ve been defending really well at home.”
Samsonov gave up his first goal of the game more than halfway through the second period after failing to defend a rebound shot from San Jose’s Mikael Granlund. Through his first three starts of the season, the first-year VGK goalie has held opponents to just one goal in two of them.
With under 20 seconds left in the second period, Samsonov gave up his second lamp lighter in a game where the Sharks would only get 17 chances at the net. He ended the night with 23 saves for a save percentage of .885.
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