What's up with the gold knights?



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Photo: Patrick Smith (Getty)

The second year crisis hit early. The Vegas Golden Knights, a half-hearted year of the first miraculous season with a trip to the finals, are 1-3-0, and they do not score. It is a problem against any team, but especially when we try to follow an attack like that of the defending champions.

The Capitals beat the Golden Knights 5-2 in a rematch for the Cup final. If you do not want to read too much about Vegas 'slow start on the outcome of a single match, note that Evgeny Kuznetsov is red-hot and seems to have the knights' number. He had eight points in the five-game and seven-point final in the first three games of the season this season, following Thursday's four-game playoff.

Kuznetsov scored one goal and three assists, including this patient beauty, eliminating the two VGK defensemen from the game just by holding the puck long enough, preparing Alex Ovechkin for a single goal.

There is no shame in losing to the Caps, although it's not like things are going to get any easier tonight, with a date in Pittsburgh.

"It's a long year and we need to find a quick fix," said defender Shea Theodore. "Our goal is this road trip that you want to be a .500 team, and when we play like that, it will not happen. We must find solutions and find our game. "

It's certainly a long year, but it's relatively new for a team that opened last season by winning eight wins out of nine, did not lose its third match before Halloween, and did not have a course 1 -3-0 after November. A theory:

Another potential cause: the Golden Knights have simply not scored goals. They scored exactly two goals each game this season (including a 2-1 shootout win over Minnesota). Since we are talking about a very small sample, there may be nothing special about it. Coach Gerard Gallant spoke of a lack of "puck luck" and goalkeeper Marc-Andre Fleury pointed out that Vegas had reached four positions in this game.

"It looks like we've had a few nights like this until now this season," Fleury said. "It's a good sign – get chances, get the pucks to the net. We will score a goal at some point. "

But if there is more to do? It is ridiculous to question the lack of offensive chemistry when, obviously, this team had no time to play together, while it has won several victories to start last season. And at first glance, the team is not that different from last year's: David Perron and James Neal (and, uh, Tomas Tatar, I guess) have come out, and Paul Stastny and Max Pacioretty are present. But there were complications. Stastny was injured on Monday and will miss at least the rest of this trip, and maybe a lot longer. Alex Tuch is injured and has never participated in a match. Cody Eakin only made his debut last night. Nate Schmidt, a defender who moves the puck and organizes a lot of things in the other direction, is serving a 20-game PED suspension. The Golden Knights are not as talented and talented as they are today when everyone is in training, and the makeup of their second and third lines is constantly changing because of that. Given the number of Knights skaters who played their best in previous seasons, chemistry matters.

The notation is not the concern here, in the long run. This is the defense, which was and remains projected as the weakness of the Knight, and Vegas has awarded 15 goals in four games. Once again, I want to emphasize that four parts represent only four parts. I will not say that this team is doomed to fail or anything (Knights fans: please do not send e-mail!). But this is a kind of adversity at the beginning of the season that the franchise has literally never known.

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