Bad Luck To Blame For The Vegas Golden Knights Season Struggles

In the city of Vegas, lady luck reigns supreme. Ever since their inception in 2018, the Vegas Golden Knights have had nothing but luck. Like so many tourists at the blackjack table, their luck may have finally run out.

By no means is this a testament to how general manager Kelly McCrimmon built his roster. By no means does this mean Jack Eichel is a “bad luck” charm for the locker room. Every NHL team runs into injury trouble now and then and unfortunately for Vegas when it rained, it poured.

Ever since the calendar turned to 2022, the Golden Knights have sent nine different players to stays on the IR. Seven players still remain as of April 26th. Most notably the Golden Knights’ goaltending had been decimated with Robin Lehner and Laurent Brossoit making appearances on the injured list. Having Marc Andre Fleury would have been perfect in that situation. That has led to plenty of chirping from opposing fans criticizing the off-season trade.

Everyone who visits Vegas wants good luck. If they find it, they should send some over to the Vegas Golden Knights.

Then again, a healthy season out of an injury-free Robin Lehner would have more than made up for Fleury’s absence. The Golden Knights are currently on their third and fourth-string goalie, although current starter Logan Thompson has put up respectable numbers.

You can criticize McCrimmon for not addressing backup goaltending during the trade deadline, but then again the conditional first the Chicago Blackhawks got for Fleury may have been too high a price to reacquire him.

Now let’s take a look at Eichel. Fans of other NHL teams have been so quick to say that trade doomed the team, as us hockey fans are a mysterious bunch. Pair that with Eichel’s less than welcoming homecoming and you got a bad look.

Even though Vegas only got 31 games (as of April 26th) out of Eichel, he scored 21 points. That might be slightly concerning, considering on his career he has 0.926 points per game, so maybe we should just say this is because he came off an injury, or that many of the Vegas supporting cast was on the IR during games he finally played in.

Encouraging news is that he had the third highest shooting percentage of his career. His 10.21% for the 2021-2022 season is just a hair below his 2017-2018 shooting percentage of 10.16%. His highest percentage was in 36 goal 2019-2020 campaign where he shot at 15.9%.

McCrimmon should make some moves in the offseason. He has a brilliant starring cast of Matt Stone, Eichel, Max Pacioretty, etc. The odds of them all getting hurt again at the same time as they did this season are very low, but maybe add some depth to even things out? Head coach Peter DeBoer has been rumored to be on the hot seat, and considering that Vegas sent Gerrard Gallant away for seemingly much less, maybe he has good reason to be.

Vegas might miss the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. All is not lost, and if this team gets healthy and finds a way to fire on all cylinders then Golden Knights fans can forget about a playoff-less spring and look forward to next season. Maybe they might want to address their salary cap situation, however.