Golden Knights Takeaways: Hill Makes Solid First Impression, Jones Chased Again

For the third time in franchise history, the Vegas Golden Knights have started the season 3-0. They defeated the Seattle Kraken 5-2 Saturday night with five goals in forty minutes. This extends their all-time winning streak against the Kraken to a perfect 5-0 record.

The Golden Knights will play yet another Pacific Division team Tuesday- the Calgary Flames.

But before then, here are our takeaways from the Golden Knight’s third win of the season.

Golden Knights Takeaways

Confident Goaltending

In his first regular-season game as the Golden Knights goaltender, Adin Hill made 31 saves for his first VGK win. He looked good all night, and the team’s overall play helped him out at both ends of the ice.

He absorbed shots well and prevented rebounds. He made several saves square to the shooter, off of tipped and redirected shots, and even one where he lost his stick in the mayhem.

“I felt pretty good. It’s nice when your team scores 12 seconds into the game. That settled the nerves a bit,” said Hill.

Having both Hill and Logan Thompson start the season off on such as high note is a big positive for the Golden Knights, who will be without typical starting goalie Robin Lehner for the entire season.

“They are both great goalies. I think he (Hill) made a lot of big stops tonight to keep us in it early. I think they have both done a great job,” said Shea Theodore.

Head coach Bruce Cassidy went as far as to say that both haven’t let in a bad goal.

“If you look at the three games, they haven’t allowed a bad goal. That’s what you want out of your goaltending. Good consistent, solid goaltending, and we’ve gotten that,” said Golden Knights head coach Bruce Cassidy.

Poor Martin Jones

Dating back to his time with the San Jose Sharks, Martin Jones does not exactly have great career numbers against the Vegas Golden Knights. Entering Saturday’s game, the veteran goaltender had a 3.63 goals-against-average in twelve meetings against the VGK.

After giving up five goals in two periods, things only got worse for Jones. He has now been pulled nine times against the Golden Knights in 13 games.

Stone v Tanev

As someone who hails from Pittsburgh, I was not surprised by the effort Brandon Tanev put in late in the game to try and give his team a spark. He went after captain Mark Stone, who bit, and the two had a nice conversation at the bench. Keep this in mind for the next time these two teams play on Nov. 25.

Mark Stone and Brandon Tanev jawing at each other on the bench. pic.twitter.com/dHM8IERysZ

— Emerald City Hockey (@EmeraldCityHky) October 16, 2022

Strong Game From Kolesar

With Paul Cotter now in the lineup for the foreseeable future, I wrote yesterday that the VGK now have an internal bottom-six battle. In that piece, I argued whether or not the offensive capabilities were there for Keegan Kolesar to remain in the lineup over Michael Amadio and even Jake Leschyshyn.

Twelve seconds into Saturday night’s game, Kolesar shut me up quickly. He scored the Golden Knight’s second-fastest goal to start a game in team history off a nice pass from Will Carrier.

I still think Kolesar has much more to do when working on his offensive game. But he had a strong game Saturday with a goal, a drawn penalty, and a hilarious glass-banging play.

Goal Scoring Race

One more quick takeaway. With Jonathan Marchessault scoring two goals Saturday night, he has taken over as the team’s leading goal scorer. As always, this is a healthy bit of internal competition between the guys in the locker room. Marchessault has won this imaginary award twice in team history.