Coyotes at Golden Knights
The Vegas Golden Knights may have gotten the boost they needed to get their season moving in the right direction and take that positive result into Friday's game against the visiting Arizona Coyotes. Vegas scored an improbable 4-3 victory at Nashville on Wednesday when Max Pacioretty scored the tying goal with less than a second left in regulation and Paul Stastny won it in overtime.
“We had everybody on board tonight,” Pacioretty told reporters. “We’ve had situations like this before where we’ve had a game that we want to rally behind, and this is definitely one of them.” The Golden Knights are 3-6-2 in their last 11 games with Wednesday's victory snapping a three-game slide (0-2-1). Christian Dvorak scored twice in Arizona's 4-3 shootout victory over Anaheim on Wednesday, making the Coyotes 6-2-1 in their last nine games. Arizona has won three straight meetings after prevailing 4-1 on Oct. 10 behind a pair of goals by Conor Garland and 37 saves from Darcy Kuemper.
TV: 6 p.m. ET, FS Arizona Plus, AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain (Vegas)
ABOUT THE COYOTES (15-8-3): Dvorak needed only two shots to record his second two-goal game of the campaign and his eight goals are second on the club to Garland (10). Defenseman Alex Goligoski (15 points) has a goal and three assists in the past two games while Nick Schmaltz (team-high 19 points) has zero goals and eight assists in 14 November contests. Kuemper (10-6-1, 2.03 goals-against average), who posted a .933 save percentage in October and is at .932 in November, has never faced Vegas.
ABOUT THE GOLDEN KNIGHTS (12-11-4): Vegas and back-up Malcolm Subban soldier on without No. 1 goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, who has missed the last two games because of a serious illness in the family. Pacioretty (nine goals) paces the club with 25 points - three in his last two games - while Mark Stone and Reilly Smith (11 goals apiece) lead the team in scoring after each tallied Wednesday. William Karlsson (eight goals, 23 points) has been kept off the scoresheet in the last five games after recording four goals and three assists in the previous three contests.
OVERTIME
1. Arizona has scored one power-play goal in each of its last three games and is 10-0-1 this season when scoring with the man advantage.
2. Stastny's goal Wednesday was his 700th career point as he joined father Peter to become one of three father-son duos in the NHL to reach that milestone. Gordie and Mark Howe, and Bobby and Brett Hull are the others.
3. The Golden Knights are 1-5-2 in games not started by Fleury this season.