The Vegas Golden Knights have fallen to 1-4-0 on the season after suffering a 4-2 loss to the Penguins in Pittsburgh Thursday night.
The effects of injuries to Alex Tuch and Paul Stastny and the suspension of Nate Schmidt have reverberated around the Golden Knights’ performance so far this season, but today is a new day for Vegas to turn things around. It will be the second and final regular-season meeting with the Philadelphia Flyers (2-2-0), and Vegas would like to even up the score.
The rematch between the Knights and Flyers comes less than 10 days after these teams squared off opening night in Vegas, which resulted in a 5-2 win for Philadelphia thanks to a two-goal performance by Wayne Simmonds.
But the Flyers are dealing with multiple injuries of their own, with James van Riemsdyk out 5-6 weeks and sophomore center Nolan Patrick expected to miss 7-10 days.
Jordan Weal centered the Flyers’ second line in Friday’s practice in place of the injured Patrick, and it’s possible Corban Knight (such irony) could draw into the lineup after returning from an injury sustained in the preseason. Travis Konecny left Friday’s practice with a foot injury, so his status for this afternoon is questionable. If he is unable to go, Michael Raffl could slot in on the second line, in which case Knight (again, gotta love the irony) would take Raffl’s normal position on the fourth line.
The Flyers have struggled mightily on the penalty kill, most recently surrendering three power-play goals to the Senators. Philadelphia currently has the third-worst penalty kill in the league, operating at just 68.4 percent. This sets up a good situation for a Golden Knights power play that has yet to light the lamp this season.
For Vegas, defenseman Jake Bischoff was assigned to the AHL Chicago Wolves after making the team out of training camp. Tomas Hyka is likely to remain in the lineup after a strong showing against Pittsburgh.
Here are the projected lineups for this afternoon’s tilt:
Golden Knights
Marchessault — Karlsson — Smith
Pacioretty — Haula — Nosek
Carpenter — Eakin — Hyka
Carrier — Bellemare — Reaves
McNabb — Miller
Theodore — Engelland
Merrill — Holden
Fleury
Subban
Flyers
Giroux (#28) — Couturier (#14) — Voracek (#93)
Lindblom (#23) — Weal (#40) — Konecny (#11)
Laughton (#21) — Vorobyev (#24) — Simmonds (#17)
Raffl (#12) — Lehtera (#15) — Weise (#22)
Provorov (#9) — Gostisbehere (#53)
Hagg (#8) — MacDonald (#47)
Sanheim (#6) — Gudas (#3)
Elliott (#37)
Pickard (#33)
Let’s discuss!
Pre-Game Poll: Will Vegas score a power-play goal today?
| Definitely | 2 |
| Probably | 2 |
| Maybe | 1 |
| Nope | 0 |
| Not if Gritty has anything to say about it | 2 |