3 takeaways from Knights’ loss: ‘Heartbreaker’ after comeback
The Golden Knights bounced back from one of their worst performances of the season and showed far more resolve and fight Thursday night in Tampa, Florida.
It still wasn’t enough to avoid a second consecutive loss.
Nick Paul knocked in a rebound with 1:13 remaining to lift the Lightning to a 5-4 victory at Amalie Arena, handing the Knights their second consecutive regulation loss for just the second time this season.
“It’s always a heartbreaker when you give up a goal late in regulation,” forward Jack Eichel said.
The Knights (21-8-5), who erased a 4-2 deficit in the third period, had a couple looks during a frantic final few seconds as the clock ticked down, but Andrei Vasilevskiy kept the puck out of the net for Tampa Bay (16-13-5).
“That desperation is the way we need to play for 60 minutes,” Eichel said of the third period. “I thought we attacked better and played in their end, but it’s tough to find positives when you don’t get any points.”
Jiri Patera, making just his second start of the season and fifth of his career, stopped the first shot only to have the rebound end up on the stick of Paul all the way across the ice. Patera couldn’t get back across the crease in time and laid face down on the ice after the puck wound up in the net.
The Knights, playing without both of their top goaltenders with Adin Hill and Logan Thompson injured, were in the game right to the end as they rallied to tie the game with 10:16 remaining on goals by Jonathan Marchessault and Paul Cotter.
“I thought we had a great third period,” coach Bruce Cassidy said. “I know we deserved better after that. We did a lot of things well and probably could have had the lead late. We had a lot of really good looks. It didn’t work out that way, but we’ll take the good from it.”
Marchessault also scored in the first period, while Eichel had two assists to extend his franchise-record points streak to 12 games.
Cotter added an assist, and defenseman Brayden McNabb had two helpers in the loss.
Paul and Nikita Kucherov, the league leader in points, each had a goal and an assist for the Lightning. Victor Hedman had three assists.
Here are three takeaways from the loss:
1. Patera battles
Despite Patera’s lack of experience, he is the far more seasoned of the goaltenders who dressed for the Knights on Thursday.
Isaiah Saville, the 2019 fifth-round pick who was called up from the American Hockey League affiliate in Henderson on Wednesday in place of an injured Thompson (upper body), has yet to appear in an NHL game.
Patera was called up earlier in the week in place of Hill (lower body). He had won the first three starts of his career, prompting Cassidy to joke Thursday morning that his team had the only pair of goaltenders in the league who had never lost.
That’s no longer the case, though Patera had his moments as he made 31 saves.
Veteran defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said before the game the team doesn’t expect to skip a beat despite the inexperience in net.
“We don’t change much,” he said. “The biggest thing is the puck movement. We just go over what our calls are when they have the puck. But other than that, they just have to be confident and trust we’re going to play our best game in front of them.”
2. Second-period struggles
The Knights entered this trip with the best second-period margin in the league, but have struggled in the middle frame in the last two games.
Tampa’s four goals in the second period bring the damage to 7-0 on the trip.
“Obviously we have to address what we need to do better in some of these periods that are getting away from us,” Cassidy said. “We’re too veteran of a group to let a five-on-three goal snowball into a two-goal deficit for us. We have to be able to put the breaks on that, get back to our game. Bend but don’t break, so to speak. We weren’t able to do that and weren’t able to do that the other night or tonight.”
After Alex Barre-Boulet cut the Knights’ lead to 2-1 at the 8:25 mark of the second period, Kucherov scored with a two-man advantage. Brayden Point scored a power-play goal 33 seconds later and then scored again with 1:10 remaining in the period.
Cassidy said it’s on the team’s top players and leaders, himself included, to make the in-game adjustments to make sure opponents can’t maintain that kind of momentum.
“We just let the second period get away from us,” Eichel said. “Give the guys credit, we battled back in the third to tie it up. It’s tough to swallow knowing we did a lot of good things in the third period to give ourselves a chance and then give up that goal late.”
The penalty kill was also an issue again, as the Knights have surrendered multiple power-play goals in three straight games for the first time in franchise history.
3. All square
The Knights will wake up Friday morning no longer in sole possession of first place in the Pacific Division for the first time since the early days of the season.
Vancouver (22-9-3) got a point in Dallas to give them 47 on the season, the same as the Knights in the same amount of games. Those two teams have more points than any other team in the NHL.
It could have been worse for the Knights, who have come back to earth a bit after an 11-0-1 start.
Vancouver led in the third period until Thomas Harley’s goal with 3:30 remaining in regulation forced overtime.
Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.
