In a year of inconsistency, there has been one constant in the Golden Knights game throughout the first 29 games. It’s the league’s 2nd ranked penalty kill which just so happens to be the #1 PK at home and has killed 20 straight penalties at T-Mobile Arena.
The Golden Knights have killed penalties off at an 85.2% clip and are well over 90% on home ice, but never, and by that I mean in the history of the franchise, has the PK shown up bigger than it did on Tuesday night.
Following the Ryan Reaves ejection, the Capitals, who already had a 2-1 lead, went on the man-advantage for five minutes spanning over two periods. Not only did the Golden Knights kill it off, they barely even allowed a scoring chance. Vegas went on to kill two more penalties in the 3rd amassing a perfect 5 for 5 kill against a team scoring on more than 25% of their power plays.
It was big. Obviously, we had killed one of the best power plays in the league tonight. The guys responded because they were trying to pick up Ryan. They did an outstanding job. I think there was two more in the third period that they had to kill. I think we killed nine minutes of the 15-minute span there between the second and the third period and we did outstanding. -Gerard Gallant
Despite spending just short of 11 minutes at 5-on-4, the Capitals mustered up just three shots on goal. According to NaturalStatTrick.com, Washington had just one scoring chance on their five power plays and not a single high-danger chance.
That’s a lethal power play there, I think we did a really good job of forcing pressure down ice and kind of rattling them and when they got into the zone they were kind of tired or mishmashed or not enough guys up on the ice. That was big for us momentum-wise, big for our penalty kill, big for our team. -Eakin
Aside from one shot from Ovechkin’s office and another from nearly the same spot that John Carlson missed, the Capitals PP spent most of the time trying to enter the zone, changing players, or struggling to fan the puck around to Ovechkin. It was essentially the perfect game penalty killing for the Golden Knights.
The Golden Knights power play king. (Photo Credit: SinBin.vegas Photographer Brandon Andreasen)
