Vegas Golden Knights and Los Angeles Kings have NHL’s newest rivalry
The NHL’s newest rivalry between the Vegas Golden Knights and Los Angeles Kings is quickly becoming one of its best
Nothing gets sports fans going like a rivalry. It gets people fired up and going to games. Going into their inaugural season, the Vegas Golden Knights lacked a true rival. People assumed there would be a desert rivalry featuring the Arizona Coyotes and the NHL’s newest team, but it doesn’t exist yet. However, the Knights have found a perfect rival – the Los Angeles Kings.
On the ice and off the ice, these two teams simply do not like each other. From the moment the Golden Knights Twitter account started, whoever runs it has been sassy and savage. The Kings Twitter account has a similar reputation. So obviously, they’ve had their moments. That just adds to the rivalry on the ice.
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Even though the Kings and Knights have only played four times (as of March 1), their games have been classics. Two of their four games have been determined by one goal. A third was a one-goal game until an empty-net goal with just over a minute left. But it was a 4-1 game, the latest of the four, which can be considered the boiling point of this rivalry.
The Boiling Point
Forward Ryan Reaves is the kind of player you love if he’s on your team and hate if he isn’t. He’s one of the last pure enforcers in the NHL. The league has generally shifted to speed, but at 6-foot-1 and 225 pounds, Reaves is a physical force to be reckoned with. He accumulates penalty minutes like Alex Ovechkin accumulates goals.
Reaves had his moments with the Kings even before being traded to the Golden Knights in the Derick Brassard three-way trade. He used to play for the St. Louis Blues and was a polarizing player back then. Kings fans probably remember this hard hit to Anze Kopitar.
So obviously, Reaves was fairly high on LA’s most wanted list even before Feb. 27. Fresh off a 3-2 loss to the Kings on the road the night before, Vegas got a home game against them the next night. The night before, Reaves was engaged physically throughout the game, getting in the Kings’ faces.
On Feb. 27, he was involved in two incidents in under five minutes. With under 10 minutes to go, Reaves boarded defenseman Derek Forbort. He got two minutes for this.
(h/t Sin Bin Vegas)
The second of his incidents was far more controversial. Reaves punched Kings defenseman Drew Doughty in the back of the head. He got a roughing penalty for it. Roughing has a vague definition, but this probably falls under it.
(h/t Sin Bin Vegas)
When you’re Reaves and you have a history of doing violent things against the Kings, you lose the benefit of the doubt. He was doing what he does best – getting involved physically and wearing down his opponents.
Needless to say, the fire was burning after the game, which Vegas lost 4-1. Golden Knights head coach Gerard Gallant poured a tank of gasoline on it by defending Reaves (the coach also got a two-minute penalty for abuse of officials immediately after the roughing penalty).
“I don’t want [Reaves] to change his game,” Gallant said. “I want him to go up and down… to go to the net, play hard, finish checks, stay out of the penalty box — obviously, that’s a big thing. He came in and apologized after the game. I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault. You played hard. You played the way we want you to play.'”
Vegas has an underdog mentality. Perhaps that’s helping motivate them to the greatest season an expansion team has ever had. Thanks to the expansion draft rules, the Golden Knights had a much better roster to start than any other expansion team. But at the end of the day, they were still mostly a bunch of unproven players who teams willingly gave up.
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Unfortunately, the two teams won’t face each other again in the regular season. But sign me up for a playoff series between the Kings and Knights. It appears this rivalry isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Which could be a good thing for both franchises.