Golden Knights season hit rock bottom in Calgary

The positive vibes of Nate Schmidt’s return to the lineup Nov. 18 lasted about 24 hours before the Golden Knights’ second season hit its low point.

The Knights went on the road to Calgary and got slaughtered 7-2 by the eventual Pacific Division champion Flames, falling to 9-12-1 on the season.

“That was a big-time wake-up call,” coach Gerard Gallant said. “For sure.”

Johnny Gaudreau had a goal and three assists. In the first period.

Matthew Tkachuk and Sean Monahan finished with two goals each with Tkachuk adding two assists. Knights goaltender Malcolm Subban was under siege in net as the skaters in front of him had no answer on the second leg of a back-to-back.

It’s a game the Knights looked back on as a pivotal moment in the season more than four months later after they had reversed course and clinched a playoff spot.

“Early in the year, we weren’t good at times,” said Jon Merrill, who was a healthy scratch in the blowout loss. “We knew we needed to right the ship and get things going in the right direction. It’s definitely one of those games where you have to look in the mirror and figure some things out.”

It worked.

Two nights later, the Knights escaped Arizona with a 3-2 overtime win and started a five-game winning streak that put them over .500 for good, including a 2-0 home shutout of Calgary.

“Anytime you go in, and I think we gave up (five) goals in the first period, it’s just way too many,” Shea Theodore said. “When you go through a game like that, you kind of refocus.

“Sometimes you need that and I think it was kind of good to happen early and I thought we bounced well after that.”

The blowout loss brought the Knights quickly back to earth after they had ridden the emotion of Schmidt’s return from suspension the day before in Edmonton to a 6-3 win, which was one of their best efforts to that point. The loss showed Schmidt being back in the lineup wasn’t going to magically fix their Knights early-season issues.

Schmidt remembers knowing even at the time the team might have needed to hit rock bottom in order to understand things weren’t going to be as smooth as they were in the inaugural season.

“Personally, I thought it was it,” Schmidt said. “I remember talking to (assistant coach Ryan McGill) about it and saying, ‘Maybe we needed that.’ He said you don’t really want to hear that (as a coach). But really, you might need that to see things just aren’t going to be handed to you on a silver platter.

“I think it was a game that made us understand that we’re just not skilled or talented enough to just show up and out-skill teams and not have to work every night. Once we kind of got that back in our noggins, we were a lot better off with our game.”

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com or 702-277-8028. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on Twitter.