It’s been the tale of two starts to the season for the Calgary Flames and Vegas Golden Knights, who meet Saturday night in Las Vegas.
Calgary is ranked 32nd out of 32 teams in the NHL standings with just two points in five games and brings a four-game losing streak and a minus-nine goal differential into T-Mobile Arena.
Vegas, meanwhile, has captured eight of a possible 10 points en route to the Pacific Division lead, and the team has a five-game point streak. The Golden Knights have won two in a row, including a 4-2 come-from-behind win over the Flames on Tuesday in Calgary.
Vegas also enters Friday night’s action with the league’s top scorer in Jack Eichel (11 points, five goals), top assist man in Mark Stone (nine) and the co-leader in goal scoring in Pavel Dorofeyev (six). Mitch Marner, who signed an eight-year, $96 million contract with the Golden Knights in a sign-and-trade with Toronto during the summer, is still looking for his first goal in a Vegas uniform but has six assists in five games and is a team-leading plus-6 in plus-minus.
If you want to nitpick, Vegas has allowed the first goal in all five of its games and has been spotty at times defensively, almost squandering a 6-3 third-period lead Thursday before holding on for a wild 6-5 victory over the visiting Boston Bruins.
“Obviously, you don’t want it to be that close, but that’s hockey, and that’s life,” Golden Knights defenseman Zach Whitecloud said. “Excited for the guys. We did a good job in a lot of areas.”
Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy agreed.
“This was one of our more — it might sound funny, 6-5 — complete games, especially offensively,” Cassidy said. “I thought we were the better team most of the night.”
Calgary is coming off a 3-1 loss at Utah on Thursday. Rasmus Andersson scored a power-play goal midway through the first period to give the Flames the early lead, but Utah rallied to take a 2-1 lead in the second period, outshooting Calgary 18-4 in the process, and sealed the win with a Kevin Stenlund empty-netter.
Since opening the season with a 4-3 shootout win at Edmonton, the Flames have scored just six goals in four games.
“We’ve lost four in a row, which is definitely not good enough,” Andersson said. “We’ve just got to take a breath. It’s been five games only. We kind of know what to do in here. Five-on-five, we’ve been a good team. We’ve been a good team a long time. … Let’s just pause and take a breath and get ready for Saturday.”
“You need to find your game in a hurry because you can’t make the playoffs the first month of the year, but you can surely miss them,” Calgary coach Ryan Huska said.
There was some potentially good news for the Flames.
Forward Jonathan Huberdeau, who finished second on the team in both goals (28) and points (62) last season and is a key member of the team’s penalty kill and power play, was activated off the injured list and is expected to make his season debut Saturday. Huberdeau was injured in a crease collision with goaltender Kevin Lankinen in an Oct. 1 preseason game against Vancouver.
