Three takeaways from the Golden Knights’ shutout loss

The Utah Hockey Club shut out the Vegas Golden Knights in a 6-0 victory at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday.

Ilya Samsonov made 22 saves, as the Golden Knights fell to 15-7-3 on the season.

“Obviously, that one stings a bit,” Vegas forward Tanner Pearson said. “Not the way we want to play at home.”

Here are three takeaways from the game:

Costly Turnovers

The Golden Knights started the game well, but ultimately, costly turnovers in their end gave Utah the life it needed to gain a large lead early.

Vegas defenseman Shea Theodore’s first turnover, off a poke check by Barrett Hayton, started a Utah rush that Clayton Keller finished.

Alex Kerfoot stole Samsonov’s attempt at a stretch pass, resulting in the second goal. Samsonov’s diving attempt at the save made things closer than it should have been, but the puck hit the net nonetheless.

In all, the Golden Knights gave up four goals in the opening 20 minutes.

“We didn’t execute well enough early on,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said. “We mismanaged the puck in the first three goals in every position, so we ended up chasing the game. We can’t chase the game in the National Hockey League. We’ll catch it every once in a while. … It’s not a good formula, so we put ourselves in a bad spot.”

Lots Of Hockey

The Golden Knights will take Sunday off after playing seven games in a span of 10 days. They haven’t had a lot of practice time in between and haven’t had a chance to really catch their breath.

“The schedule’s a bit ridiculous to go on a nine-day road trip, and then come back and play back-to-back, right?” Vegas defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said. “But you have a two-week break in the middle of the season. That’s just going to happen. You have to play a lot of hockey in a short period of time. So, you know, a lot of teams are going through tough stretches right now. Like I said, you have that Four Nations break, it’s a lot of hockey, more than usual. So, I can’t really use it as an excuse. I think we’re deep enough that we can probably get through that.”

Golden Knights Look to Move On

Regardless of how brutal the schedule is, the Golden Knights will return to the ice on Monday in hopes of getting ready for one of their bitter rivals – the Edmonton Oilers – on Tuesday.

“You just move on. Obviously look in the mirror a bit, right? We’ll review a few things, why it happened,” Pietrangelo said. “But we’ve got another three and four coming up, so it’s a lot of hockey right now. Just got to get ready for Monday. We need a good practice on Monday.”

Paul Delos Santos is the Las Vegas sports insider for Dice City Sports. Follow him on X at @PaulDelos_.