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Year 2, Game 6: Golden Knights ride Fleury’s heroics to a 1-0 victory

It wasn’t necessarily the prettiest of wins, but we’ll take it. In a game filled with highlight-reel saves and grade-A scoring chances on both ends of the ice, the Golden Knights prevailed against the Philadelphia Flyers thanks to a last minute goal by Cody Eakin.

The Knights now head back home to Vegas for a five game homestand after their five-game road trip concludes with a 2-3-0 record.

The Marc-Andre Fleury Show

Marc-Andre Fleury was nothing short of spectacular Saturday afternoon. A quick glance at his stats may not suggest it, but Fleury has been playing outstanding for the Golden Knights so far. He has had no chance of saving a majority of the goals that he has let in this season. Beyond that, he’s made a number of highlight reel saves to keep the Knights alive in games, and added a couple in today’s game as well. This was easily Fleury’s best game of the season.

The Flyers almost got ahead early on in the game when Fleury absolutely robbed Jordan Weal with a spinning-back fist save. Easily a candidate for save of the year so far.

Then, with the score still 0-0 late in the second, Fleury made another stunning save to stop a streaking Claude Giroux from putting the Flyers up one.

After Cody Eakin’s goal with just over a minute to play, the Flyers nearly tied up the game when Fleury decided he had one last game-saving stop in him. I don’t even know which save was his best of the game anymore.

Engelland Out?

The Golden Knights’ defence hasn’t looked great to start the season. With Nate Schmidt out with a 20-game suspension, their pairings haven’t been gelling on either end of the rink. Things may only get harder from here on out, when Deryk Engelland got tied up with a Flyer and headed straight to the locker room. He ended up missing the rest of the game. Per The Athletic’s Jesse Granger, coach Gerard Gallant said that it’s day-to-day and that we’ll know more tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

No luck in Vegas

If you’ve been thinking to yourself, “Boy, the Golden Knights seem really unlucky so far this season. How many posts have we hit again?” then you’re not alone. According to this chart from Sean Tierney, the Golden Knights have in fact been the unluckiest team in the league heading into today’s games when it comes to their PDO breakdown. They’ve been heavily outshooting and out-chancing opposing teams, but luck hasn’t been on their side so far.

That changed today, with the Flyers outplaying the Golden Knights in almost every aspect of the game. Largely thanks to Fleury’s play, the Golden Knights were able to squeeze out a 1-0 victory and cap off their road trip with a win.

The Knights struggled to control play for the first two periods, spending a lot of time in the defensive zone and not creating a ton of chances. Somebody must have pumped them up during the second intermission because they looked like a new team during the third period and tilted the game back in their favor.

With an early road trip out of the way, the Golden Knights can now head back home with a 2-4-0 record to regroup and get things back on track. They’ll take on the Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday night.