The Golden Knights picked up their first regulation win against the St. Louis Blues Saturday, sweeping aside the Blues 5-1.
Shea Theodore scored on the Golden Knights first shot of the game four minutes in. The teams played relatively even through the rest of the first period. In the dying seconds of the first period, Reilly Smith put a shot in the net after a face-off win, but time had expired just as he got the shot away. Neither team scored in the second, but the Blues had a massive push back. The Blues got a late powerplay and nearly scored in the dying seconds, but Marc-Andre Fleury made an incredible save on Ryan O’Reilly to keep the Blues off the score sheet.
Mark Stone gave the Golden Knights some breathing room 91 seconds into the third period, after he put a rebound shot past Blues goalie Ville Husso. St. Louis made it 2-1 shortly after when Sammy Blais found himself alone in front of the net. The Blues got a lengthy 5 on 3 power play midway through the final period, but the Vegas penalty killers stepped up. Marc-Andre Fleury also did his thing and made impeccable save after impeccable save on that penalty kill. After the Blues power play expired, Max Pacioretty scored on a partial breakaway to restore the Golden Knights’ two-goal lead. Stone added his second goal of the night to put the game out of reach. The Blues pulled their goalie with just over four minutes to play in the game to try to find a spark. They managed to get a good amount of zone time, but were unable to generate many quality scoring opportunities. Alex Tuch netted the empty net goal for the VGK with 30 seconds to play to make it 5-1, effectively ending the game.
Marc-Andre Fleury finished the game with 34 saves on 35 shots and had a .971 save percentage. Shea Theodore also broke his 16 game goalless drought and looked like his old self again. The Golden Knights took four of the six games on the road trip and moved four points ahead of both St. Louis and Minnesota for the lead in the division. The Golden Knights return home to T-Mobile Arena on March 15 for a two game set against the San Jose Sharks.
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