Golden Knights Takeaways: Internal Competition, Hill Going For Goalie Goal

The Vegas Golden Knights re-entered the win column Thursday night with a strong 5-2 win over the Winnipeg Jets thanks to a four-goal first period and a two goal performance from Jack Eichel.

They will have their biggest test of the season Saturday when they play the defending Stanley Cup Champion Colorado Avalanche at home.

Until then here are our takeaways from the Golden Knight’s fourth win of the season.

Golden Knights Takeaways

A Fun Night on the Hill

In his first start at T-Mobile Arena for the home team, Adin Hill stopped 26 of 28 for his second win of the season. But he also had two unique moments that don’t nessecarily happen every game for goalies.

Hill took the team’s only penalty, an interference call in the first period which Keegan Kolesar scored.

“No I did not, that was not part of the game plan” said Hill when asked if he planned on being the team’s PIM leader of the night.

The second unique moment for Hill came when he attempted a shot at the empty net for a goalie goal.

“I turned on it and saw their forechecker coming. So at the last second I chickened out to not cause a turnover right in front of the net. But the idea was to go for it… Ive done it three to four times and I actually missed once a long time ago by like two inches,” said Hill.

The Golden Knights have never had a goalie goal in their history. The last one in the NHL was when Pekka Rinne scored in January of 2020.

Reeling Rittich

A four-goal first period took a lot out of Winnipeg Jets goaltender David Rittich. As the game went on he found his game a little bit more, but his first period was one to forget. He had a couple of bad bounced wind up in his net such as Chandler Stephenson’s goal that went off of Brendan Dillion’s skate.

But the ‘pass’ he gave to Jack Eichel is one he will want to erase from his memory.

Rittich is the second goaltender that the Golden Knights have faced this season who has statistically bad all-around numbers against the VGK. Martin Jones, who was pulled when the Golden Knights defeated the Kraken has a 8.82 save percentage and 3.88 goals against average versus the VGK.

Entering Thursday Rittich’s save percentage against the Golden Knights was at .872% and his GAA 3.76.

Ammunition

Michael “Ammo” Amadio was re-instered into the Golden Knights lineup after being a healthy scratch for the last game. He looked good on a line with William Karlsson and Jonathan Marchessault, winning his puck battles and adding an assist on Karlsson’s goal.

“It’s welcoming. It’s pretty easy to play with those guys. You can throw it in the right spots and they are always outworking guys so it’s super easy to play with them,” said Amadio on playing with the Misfits.

Amadio says with the emergence of Paul Cotter, the Golden Knights have a healthy bottom-six depth battle.

“Yeah there is really good competition. So whoever is in or out you just gotta come to work and do your job everyday,” said Amadio.