The Vegas Golden Knights absolutely demolished the Calgary Flames 6-1 in Sin City on Saturday night NHL action.
The Flames have now lost five in a row and are dead last in the overall NHL rankings for the season.
Here are the takeaways:
What’s Going on with Dustin Wolf
As of the end of this game, Wolf has given up 15 goals in five games in even-strength hockey and has an Expected Goals Against (xGA) value of 8.33. That is below expected by 6.67, the BIGGEST in the league.
Safe to say he is in a sophomore slump, but it’s still early in the season to pick it up.
Second Period Slump
You could make the argument the Flames just got unlucky in the first period. The first shot of the game ended up being a Mitch Marner goal. After that shot, until the 11:25 mark of the first period, the Flames and Knights were even at 5-5 in shots on goal, including trading PP goals, that put the Knights up 2-1.
Calgary then outshot Vegas 8-1 until the second-last minute. Unfortunately, that lone Knights shot found the back of the Flames net, putting them up 3-1 at the first intermission.
That’s pretty unlucky.
But there was no excuse for the nightmare that was the second period.
Forget about the shot count: The Golden Knights had 15 scoring opportunities while the Flames had two. In terms of high-danger scoring opportunities, Vegas had five, including a shorthanded attempt. Two of those ended up being goals.
Calgary had zero high-danger scoring opportunities. They were no threat for Vegas goalie Adin Hill. The second period was basically a walk in the park for him.
The Flames would stage a comeback in the third period, but could not produce any goals.
Poor Penalty-Kill
The Flames went 0-for-3 on the penalty-kill. You cannot expect to put on a respectable season record if the penalty-kill is zero on the dot.
Bottom Line
As for as what I liked with the Flames, Nazem Kadri was 11-of-15 (73.3%) on the face-off.
That’s about it.
The Flames will now come back home to take on the Winnipeg Jets on Monday.
To know how bad the Calgary offense was going into this game, check out this to see who had the most individual total shots for the team all season.
HINT: It’s a defenceman…
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