Workin' in a bubble 👍 pic.twitter.com/kVeyILRueI
— x-Vegas Golden Knights (@GoldenKnights) August 1, 2020
Playing without Max Pacioretty
It’s no secret that playing without their leading scorer will hinder them a bit. While no eliminations will be made this round, one has to wonder how the Golden Knights will hold up. Who is going to step up to the plate and help this team make a deep playoff run this season?
Again, there is very little at stake in this game, and there is a possibility that Pacioretty can return later in the playoffs, but not having him on the ice now is going to affect team chemistry. It is also going to force the team to consider a future without the star.
In the end, Pacioretty is their lead scorer, and this is going to affect their offense in a multitude of ways.
Who will be the goalie heading into the playoffs?
There are a lot of questions that need to be answered before the official NHL playoffs can begin, and one of them is who the Golden Knights will be using as their goalie for the postseason. Robin Lehner assumed the goalie position shortly after being traded to the Knights by Chicago and even had a .940 save percentage in three games.
Marc-Andre Fleury, however, went 27-16-5 this season and had a GAA of 2.77 and a save percentage of .905, which are the worst numbers of his career. Interestingly enough though, Fleury has stepped up his game since the acquisition of Lehner and went 2-2 with a GAA of 2.51, and a save percentage of .940
“My plan is both guys are going to play through the round-robin,” Vegas coach Peter DeBoer said. “I think coming off a four-month pause, in order to make sure that we get everybody up to speed and are fair and have all the information at our disposal in the playoffs, that’s the right thing to do. They’ll probably play two and two (games each), and then we’ll make some tough decisions. How long those decisions last, they’re not written in stone.”
In the end, it looks like it’s all going to come down to who comes up clutch for The Las Vegas Golden Knights and who doesn’t. Unfortunately for Fleury, though, he will likely face an uphill battle due to his less than stellar stat record. Maybe that will all go out the window when the playoffs start, but he still probably isn’t the favorite.
“Whoever we start that can change very quickly depending on how the playoffs go, injuries, matchups and things like that,” DeBoer said. “We’ve got two guys that everybody, whoever is standing in that net, is capable of helping us win. It’s a good problem to have.”
Will coronavirus come into play?
Believe it or not, Major league baseball is on the verge of canceling their season after an onslaught of positive tests from several teams, and there is a genuine possibility that this could happen with NHL as well. The season continuing depends on the cooperation of every team involved in the playoffs.
