The Golden Knights need to outscore their shoddy penalty kill to beat Dallas
On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Mike McKenna were joined by Jon Goyens, who coaches the QMJHL Cape Breton Eagles. Goyens lent his unique perspective to the remaining playoff series. When the hosts asked whether special teams would make or break the Golden Knights, the coach explained that Vegas has won games on the strength of their 5-on-5 hockey.
Mike McKenna: Let’s head out to the Western Conference now. We’re going to preview the Dallas Stars and the Vegas Golden Knights. It’s probably easy to categorize this as a battle of special teams, where each of these clubs have been good and bad in certain areas. You’ve got the insight for us going into it.
Jon Goyens: Is this going to be the round where a team with a 60% PK finally gets sunk? The Knights just cannot hold the fort down on special teams.
A real strength for Vegas that helped them against Edmonton was that in 5-on-5 they kept them to the outside. That’s why they’re +16. They’re the highest-scoring team left in the playoffs right now with 31 goals at even strength.
Dallas right now has 29 for and 28 against for a +1. The thing is, at 5-on-5 both these teams can score in very similar manners. They want to attack on the rush, they recover pucks quickly, and after those recoveries they look for quick strikes once again. They hover around the same ratings for scoring off the rush, off the forecheck, off the cycle, and off of rebounds. They have very similar zone times. They score in very similar manners, but the one area where Dallas does have an advantage with Joe Pavelski leading the way is deflection goals.
Who’s going to be better at 5-on-5 at deflecting everything to the outside and slowing their opponent to slow down through the neutral zone? The spine of this series is going to be the transitions through the middle of the ice.
Will this be a 5-on-5 series? Or will the Vegas Golden Knights win or lose because of their special teams?
Tyler Yaremchuk: It is going to be fascinating. Jon Goyens is the head coach of the Cape Breton Eagles. You can find him on Twitter @gourmet_hockey.
You can watch the entire episode here…