Golden Knights Takeaways: Lil Jon’s Strategy, Shea Weber’s Assist & More

According to Gary Lawless, the Vegas Golden Knights are quite literally on the road again. For the first time in team history, the team is traveling to another game venue by car. They leave Toronto tonight and will take the roughly two-hour drive to Buffalo for Thursday’s game against the Sabres.

Let’s just hope Jonathan Marchessault and William Karlsson can behave during the trip.

The Golden Knights leave Ontario with eight-straight wins and four-straight on their current road trip. Here are Vegas Hockey Now’s takeaways from the team’s 4-3 overtime win over the Maple Leafs.

Golden Knights Takeaways

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Both Reilly Smith and Alec Martinez played in their 700th career NHL games on Tuesday evening. Fittingly, both also played college hockey with Miami (Ohio). Smith has played 335 games with the Golden Knights and Martinez 103.

In their milestone games, Martinez was a +1 and had two hits and three blocked shots. Hometown hero Smith had the more noticeable game with the game-tying goal shorthanded in the third and then the overtime winner. He has seven goals this season, and only one of them has come at five-on-five.

Remember the Wisdom of Lil Jon

Only 20 shots were put up by the Golden Knights when the night was done. This is a far cry from what coach Lil Jon likely wants out of their team, especially against an inexperienced goalie.

The Maple Leafs did a good job at defending in front of Erik Kallgren, and the Golden Knights were opportunistic with their chances.

Explaining the Non-Challange

In the first period, the Golden Knights thought about challenging Timothy Liljegren’s first goal of the night. The puck was very close to coming out of the zone and becoming offsides. Captain Mark Stone was adamant that the Golden Knights look at the play, which they did.

Not having enough time to decide if they wanted to challenge the play, head coach Bruce Cassidy used his timeout to get a longer look at the play. The puck did not come out fully, and the game remained tied.

I saw a couple of people (mostly Maple Leafs fans) get angry about this interaction which I don’t understand. Cassidy is fully within his rights to call a timeout and use that time to review the play. He paid the fine of losing his timeout, which, luckily for him, didn’t need to be used by the VGK later in the game.

Fourth Line Dominant

The Golden Knight’s fourth line of Nicolas Roy, Keegan Kolesar, and Will Carrier was great once again. More on them tomorrow, if not in the near future.

Scotiabank Arena Win

With their first win in Scotiabank Arena, the Golden Knights have now won at every current NHL arena.

But there are two venues the Golden Knights have never won at. Both will likely never see an NHL game again. They are at Nassau Coliseum, the former home of the New York Islanders, and at Lake Tahoe, where the Golden Knights played a Stadium Series game against the Colorado Avalanche and lost.

Shea Weber?

One last thing. The broadcast for the Golden Knights Tuesday night awarded injured defenseman Shea Weber with an assist on Smith’s first goal. Wrong button, but it counts in our hearts.

Weber’s contract was acquired by the Golden Knights for salary cap relief. He is unlikely to ever play in the NHL again, as the Montreal Canadiens traded his contract to the VGK for Evgenii Dadonov.

Shea Weber 1st vegas point pic.twitter.com/fnAAwtYVOe

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