Golden Knights rusty in preseason loss to Coyotes
The Golden Knights planned to use their final two preseason games as dress rehearsals before their opener against the Seattle Kraken on Tuesday.
Their first one Thursday showed they still have work to do before their fifth campaign begins. The Knights lost 3-1 to the Arizona Coyotes in front of an announced crowd of 16,883 in their last preseason game at T-Mobile Arena.
Center Travis Boyd and right wings Christian Fischer and Andrew Ladd scored for Arizona, and goaltender Karel Vejmelka made 25 saves. Center William Karlsson scored the Knights’ lone goal in the second period.
The team wraps up its preseason schedule Saturday at San Jose.
“(We’re) still knocking a little bit of rust off,” center Chandler Stephenson said. “Things have to start getting better. Got to start cleaning some things up. Got a new forecheck and got to kind of get that down. It’s still new to guys. I think once we clean that up and kind of get guys back in and whatnot we’ll be fine.”
Here are three takeaways from the loss:
1. Disjointed performance
The Knights were not their sharpest Thursday.
They were outchanced 24-19 at five-on-five. The team had a 14-5 edge in shot attempts when the top line of left wing Max Pacioretty, center Chandler Stephenson and right wing Mark Stone was on the ice, and Arizona led 36-27 when they were not.
It was a disappointing outcome given the Knights’ projected second and third lines played as well. The team is adjusting the way it forechecks in the neutral zone in the hopes of creating more turnovers, but coach Pete DeBoer said that wasn’t a factor in the performance.
“You’ve got to break teams down with a little bit of a shot mentality,” DeBoer said. “You can’t look for the perfect play every time. I think that was a story for us. I think we had some good zone time, particularly early, a couple shifts as the game went on. But when you skate off the ice and you don’t have a shot on net, it doesn’t matter if you rolled around there for 30, 40 seconds.”
2. Power play clicks
The Knights haven’t scored a power-play goal that counts since June 6, in Game 4 of their second-round series against Colorado.
It’s still been notable to see the team playing with more confidence this preseason. That continued Thursday when the Knights had two good looking power plays (out of three) and scored on one.
They had six shots on goal during their first but were unable to beat Vejmelka. They scored 10 seconds into their second off a memorable passing play, with Stephenson finding Karlsson with a diagonal pass across the offensive zone.
The Knights need to show they can maintain that level of play once the games matter. But they’ve shown encouraging signs so far.
“We’d rather have it this way than struggling,” Karlsson said. “As long as you’re creating chances you’re doing something well. Hopefully we can keep that going.”
3. DiLiberatore shows well
Knights defenseman Peter DiLiberatore was given his third preseason game Thursday despite being in Silver Knights camp all week and playing a preseason game in Tucson, Arizona, on Wednesday.
He wasn’t thrown into the lineup, either.
“I think I stuck to my game and I think I did it to the best of my ability,” DiLiberatore said. “I didn’t try and do too much outside the box. I just tried to do what I do best. I think I represented myself pretty well.”
Contact Ben Gotz at bgotz@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BenSGotz on Twitter.
