It hasn’t been a November to remember for coach Bruce Cassidy and the Vegas Golden Knights.
Heading into their final game of the month on Saturday night against the San Jose Sharks in Las Vegas, the Golden Knights have just four wins in 13 November games (4-4-5) and have lost four straight contests.
Vegas comes in off a 4-1 loss to the visiting Montreal Canadiens on Friday. The Golden Knights have a total of five goals in their last three games and have fallen behind at least 2-0 to start all three of them.
“It’s just tough going down and chasing games all the time,” forward Colton Sissons said. “We’re playing pretty good hockey, but no matter who you’re up against, going down one, two, three goals, it makes life very hard. We’ve just got to find a way to capitalize on one of our chances early and get off on a better foot because it’s tough sledding in this league when you’re down.”
“I don’t think anyone wants to panic,” center Jack Eichel said. “I don’t think that’s the recipe … ever.”
Besides, despite the rough month, the Golden Knights would still be the first wild-card team in the Western Conference if the playoffs were to start today. And as Cassidy pointed out, the team did have a six-game point streak in the middle of the month, although three of the games ended with overtime losses.
“I don’t look at it that’s it’s been a bad three weeks,” Cassidy said. “We’ve had points in six straight games. Do we want more wins? Of course. (Today), we didn’t compete hard enough offensively to finish plays.”
“The good news is that we play again in a little over 24 hours, so a chance to be better tomorrow night,” Eichel said.
The bad news is San Jose, which is one point behind Vegas in the standings, definitely has had a November to remember.
The Sharks come in off a 3-2 victory over visiting Vancouver on Friday, tying a franchise record for home wins in a calendar month (seven) last accomplished in November 2019. It also was San Jose’s ninth win in the month (9-4-1), not bad for a team that finished with just 20 victories for the entire 2024-25 campaign (20-50-12).
Yaroslav Askarov made 32 saves to pick up his fourth win in his last five starts on Friday, Will Smith and William Eklund each scored power-play goals, and Adam Gaudette scored the game-winner late in the second period for San Jose, which bounced back from an ugly 6-0 loss to NHL points leader Colorado on Wednesday in Denver.
“It was a good response,” Sharks coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “We played better. Competed a little bit harder, did some things we talked about. Keep moving forward.”
This will be the second meeting this season between the two Pacific Division rivals. Vegas won the first game 4-3 in overtime on Oct. 9 in San Jose due to a couple of costly errors by Sharks goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic.
The first blunder came with 1:34 to go in regulation on a routine dump-in by Eichel from the blue line that surprisingly slid through Nedeljkovic’s pads to tie it 3-3. The second came in overtime when Nedeljkovic came far out of his net to try and clear a loose puck that instead deflected to Reilly Smith, who then easily put the game-winner into an empty net.
“We haven’t forgotten that first game,” Sharks winger Collin Graf told reporters after Friday’s win. “We’ll be ready to go.”
Vegas is 28-2-5 all-time against the Sharks, including 13-2-2 at T-Mobile Arena.
