**Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Famer, Steve Carp’s returns to SinBin.vegas for the 2021 season. His weekly column publishes every Sunday during the Golden Knights season and is brought to you by the Jimmerson Law Firm.**

As another strange week in the NHL ends, it is time for a math lesson. This is a simple one, so don’t panic. And no, there won’t be a quiz at the end.

The NHL was hoping to play a 56-game schedule and have all 31 teams complete that number. But as the coronavirus pandemic rages on and more games are lost, the league may be quickly coming to the realization that playing 56 games by each team may not be feasible.

This isn’t baseball where you could play doubleheaders. You can’t play four or five straight nights either trying to make up the postponed contests. You can’t continue to overhaul the schedule and try and find vacant dates to make up all of the lost games.

So the NHL may wind up reverting back to its plan a year ago. That was to base the standings and the postseason participants on win percentage.

That means a team that plays fewer games but wins more of the ones it participated in could find itself in a better position than another which played all of its games. The playoffs could be determined by percentage points rather than wins and regular points.

Is that fair? No. But these continue to be unprecedented times and the NHL has no one to blame but itself. The league opted to start the season a month ago even though COVID-19 was not going anywhere. In fact, the trend was going the wrong way as different, more potent strains and variants were making their way to the U.S. and Canada.

If there had been random cases that caused a single player to be out short-term, everyone can handle that. You call up a guy from the taxi squad and it’s business as usual. But the reality is, virtually every NHL team in the U.S. has been touched by COVID-19 and it has wreaked havoc on the schedule.

The Golden Knights have already been hit by the virus with Alex Pietrangelo and coach Peter DeBoer having to miss games. Tuesday, Tomas Nosek left the game with Anaheim after the 2nd period following a positive test. The fact the league allowed the game to continue was incredulous. As was the case with Pietrangelo and St. Louis, the Ducks are fortunate no one was positive after Tuesday’s game given their players had been exposed to Nosek.

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**Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Famer, Steve Carp’s returns to SinBin.vegas for the 2021 season. His weekly column publishes every Sunday during the Golden Knights season and is brought to you by the Jimmerson Law Firm.**

Sometimes, good things emerge out of adversity.

In the case of the Golden Knights, they might have more depth on the blue line than they originally thought.

With Alex Pietrangelo in COVID protocol and Brayden McNabb on Long Term IR with a lower-body injury, coach Pete DeBoer was forced to shuffle his defensive deck over the weekend against Los Angeles.

He knew what he had in veteran Nick Holden, so putting him back on the ice was easy. DeBoer wasn’t quite sure what he’d get from Dylan Coghlan, and, to a lesser extent, Nicolas Hague.

What he got was pleasantly surprising.

Hague looks extremely comfortable playing alongside another youngster — Zach Whitecloud. He put Coghlan with Holden and the two seemed to click. The other D-pair — Shea Theodore and Alec Martinez — moved up to the No. 1 unit.

Understand that in this weird, bizarre year, things are going to crop up periodically. How your team responds is what likely determines whether you’ll be playing in mid-May and make a run at the Stanley Cup. In the Knights’ case, there has to be a rise in the overall comfort level knowing the young guys can step in and contribute, that they don’t need to be skating up the street at the Orleans Arena with the Henderson Silver Knights.

It’s safe to say Whitecloud isn’t leaving the lineup anytime soon. He continues to display the kind of poise usually reserved for someone with far more NHL experience. He may be the most pleasant surprise of this young season so far.
He’s running DeBoer’s system perfectly, supporting the attack and getting involved offensively. Such was the case with his first goal of the season Sunday. He cruised into the open space, unnoticed by the Kings, then got the puck and ripped one past Calvin Petersen.

Defensively, he’s growing more steady and confident. The turnovers don’t come as frequently and he’s settling in and not having to worry that if he makes a mistake or two he’ll find himself a member of the taxi squad, or worse, wearing a Silver Knights uniform.

Hague is also proving to be worthy of DeBoer’s trust. He is using his size effectively and like Whitecloud, is integrating himself in the attack. The fact his skating has improved so much the past four years is a credit to Hague’s hard work as well as listening to the organization’s coaches.

Coghlan was the wild card. He made his NHL debut Friday against the Kings and paired with the experienced Holden, who could cover his back, Coghlan did a good job overall in the Knights’ 5-2 win. Playing with Marc-Andre Fleury in net didn’t hurt his cause either.

We all know Pietrangelo is important to the team’s Cup hopes. He will likely be back Tuesday against Anaheim at T-Mobile Arena. And that’s a good thing. Yes, Pietrangelo may not be off to a scorching start. But for him, this is like preseason, trying to learn a new system, playing with new teammates, and adjusting his family’s day-to-day life in a new city.

He will get better as he gets more comfortable. He has shown glimpses of that. So I’m not worried about him.

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**Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Famer, Steve Carp’s returns to SinBin.vegas for the 2021 season. His weekly column publishes every Sunday during the Golden Knights season and is brought to you by the Jimmerson Law Firm.**

How bizarre was this week?

First, a member of the Golden Knights coaching staff may have been exposed to the coronavirus and as a precaution, they were kept away from the rink. Then it turned out one of them actually tested positive.

Then the team goes ahead and plays St. Louis Tuesday with general manager Kelly McCrimmon behind the bench as acting head coach assisted by Silver Knights coach Manny Viveiros and members of his staff.

The Knights spot the Blues two two-goal leads, rally behind Max Pacioretty’s hat trick only to lose 5-4 in a shootout as St. Louis beats Robin Lehner twice in the skills competition.

The following day, a player tests positive and it’s none other than Alex Pietrangelo, the former Blues captain. Thursday’s game is postponed to be made up at a later date. The facility gets shut. No practice. No media availability. Everything in Knightsville goes dark.

Then it’s announced that multiple coaches tested positive and the team’s games against San Jose in Arizona Monday and Wednesday are postponed, leaving the Knights without a game until Friday, Feb. 5.

Viveiros and his staff were unable to be on the bench for the Silver Knights’ two preseason games because they were with the Golden Knights Tuesday. Former Golden Knight Deryk Engelland was recruited to be the bench coach for the Silver Knights vs. San Jose with the real coaches in a suite at Orleans Arena and Engelland wins both games, the second of which was abruptly ended due to COVID-19 protocols involving the Barracuda with the Silver Knights leading 1-0 after two periods.

Oh, and the team’s whacky salary cap situation may have finally worked itself out with defensemen Brayden McNabb going on long-term injured reserve according to CapFriendly.com, with an unknown injury. Or, maybe it hasn’t. The current roster shows 13 forwards, five defensemen, and two goalies, and still just $31,000 in cap space. Pietrangelo is likely out for a little while, so is McNabb, so more moves are coming but they still may not be able to get Glass and Hague in the same lineup.

Does it get any stranger than this?

It doesn’t. Which begs a couple of questions:

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