Well, it happened again. In his first game with the Golden Knights, Nick Cousins found the back of the net helping his new team take home the win. He became the 6th Golden Knights to score in his debut this season and the 3rd to do it in the last four games.
Yeah, that was fun. It’s been a crazy couple of days here with all the travel but there’s no better way to be thrown in the fire than to play a game at home and obviously it was great to contribute. -Cousins
In the Golden Knights history, 10 players scored in their debut. The first to do it was James Neal, in the Golden Knights first-ever game. Then, both Alex Tuch and Vadim Shipachyov tallied in the same game against Boston a few weeks later. Then, it went dry for quite a while and the entirety of last season.
10/6/17 – James Neal (2)
10/15/17 – Vadim Shipachyov*
10/15/17 – Alex Tuch*
4/3/18 – Brandon Pirri
10/2/19 – Cody Glass*
10/27/19 – Nic Roy
12/3/19 – Chandler Stephenson
2/20/20 – Alec Martinez
2/23/20 – Patrick Brown
2/26/20 – Nick Cousins
*NHL debut
In total, the Golden Knights have gotten a goal from 10 of the 47 skaters to make their debut and it’s happened in 10 of the 25 games (a lot of guys debuted on 10/6/17 and 10/15/17).
The Golden Knights have had team success along with the goal scorers this year, another new phenomenon for 2019-20. In games with skaters making their debuts, Vegas was 5-4-1 in 2017-18 and 2-3-0 in 2018-19. This year, they are 9-1-0 with the only loss coming in Keegan Kolesar’s debut against Columbus.
Oddly enough, goals are far more common than assists. 10 players have scored a total of 11 goals, but in the 25 games in which Golden Knights have debuted, there have only been seven assists. Four of the seven came in the Golden Knights inaugural game in Dallas on October 6th, 2017.