I already said this. vegas is a solid team. they just couldnt score to start the year. they still played great hockey. well its slowly shifting. its nice to see the haters shutting up
There was always the potential to regression to the mean but the Knights started so poorly that there was a situation of having to regress upwards towards the mean. I'm not gonna go check the stats now but the first fifteen-twenty games the Knights were second in the league in shot differential while shooting at a hair over 6%.
The offense was there it was just nothing was going in. And it didn't help that every game they hit at least one post. And the psychological effect of that seemed to weigh on the team. It
looked like they were playing frustrated.
Now they're pretty much all healthy, Tuch is playing exactly to the development curve a lot of people in Vegas were expecting. And the second line is finally all healthy and looked really good today. Karlsson is heating up. Smith's production is trending back towards the mean. The fourth line has been consistently solid all year (Will Carrier has already surpassed his career year for goals with 7 now). Schmidt hasn't lost a step. Theodore is mostly solid. Even the third line with guys like Lindberg and Nosek are starting to light it up.
But there's still some problems and work to be done before the playoff push. Miller is several steps back from the quality of play he had last year. Holden and Engelland do have their share of really good defensive plays but far too often are way out of position or flat out beaten. McNabb isn't quite the Manson-esque shutdown defender he was last year. Fleury, while responsible for a lot of brilliant saves hasn't been very consistent and Subban has been so bad that Gallant can't even bring himself to start him on the tail end of back to back games. And then there's been games where the entire team just doesn't have the right effort level. The loss to LA recently was arguably the worst team performance in team history (though not the worst result). They coughed away crucial points against New Jersey and almost did it again today against the Rangers. There's still a ways to go but I'm a believer that they can be a credible threat come playoff time. Gallant just needs to smooth out the rough points.