The Vegas Golden Knights will try to set a franchise record for consecutive home wins on Monday night when they host the Carolina Hurricanes in Las Vegas.
Vegas is 8-0-0 at T-Mobile Arena this season, outscoring its opponents an impressive 43-19 in the process. The eight-game home unbeaten streak matches the team record set in its inaugural season in 2017-18 when the Golden Knights made a storybook run to the Stanley Cup Final.
The home-ice success is the main reason the Golden Knights are just one point behind the first-place Los Angeles Kings in the Pacific Division. Vegas has won just once in six road games (1-3-2).
The Golden Knights return from a two-game road trip that saw them pick up their first road win of the season, 4-2, at Edmonton on Wednesday, and then follow that up with a 4-3 overtime loss at Seattle on Friday.
Vegas jumped out to a 2-0 first-period lead over the Kraken but needed a fortunate 6-on-5 goal by Alex Pietrangelo with 1:22 to go to force overtime. Pietrangelo was attempting a pass that deflected in off the skate of Seattle defenseman Adam Larsson to tie it, 3-3. Jared McCann scored on a breakaway 29 seconds into overtime to win it for the Kraken.
“We got three of a possible four (points) on the road trip, so it’s definitely a step in the right direction, but we definitely have some things to clean up, too,” forward Tanner Pearson said.
“We wanted four (points), three’s pretty good,” Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said. “If you look at the big picture that part is pretty good. I just felt we certainly had a chance to get all four. We let that get away.”
The win over the Oilers was a costly one, however. Captain Mark Stone, second on the team with 21 points (six goals, 15 assists) suffered a lower-body injury that kept him out of the Seattle loss.
“Day-to-day but we don’t anticipate that he’ll play (Monday),” Cassidy said of Stone’s status.
Carolina had an eight-game winning streak snapped with a 6-4 loss to Colorado on Saturday night. The Hurricanes had to fly to Denver on the morning of the game because of extreme winter weather on Friday and the long day of travel, combined with the mile-high altitude, seemed to take its toll on Rod Brind’Amour’s squad as the contest went on.
Carolina took a 3-2 lead in the second period on a power-play goal by Martin Necas, but Colorado answered with three goals over a three-minute span at the end of the period to build a 5-3 cushion.
The Hurricanes cut it to 5-4 on Jordan Martinook’s second goal of the game early in the third period, but Mikko Rantanen sealed the victory for the Avalanche with an empty-netter with 50 seconds remaining.
Brind’Amour refused to use his team’s travel problems as an excuse for their first loss since Oct. 19 at St. Louis.
“There’s no excuses because we came out really well,” Brind’Amour said. “But once we got into it, you could see that we were just hanging on really, and you can’t hang on against that team. We had a couple guys (who) just didn’t have it tonight. You could see we were just out of gas.”
