LAS VEGAS (AP) It was a great time for Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley to visit the locker room after their latest win.The Golden Knights had just beaten one of the NHL’s Original Six teams
San Jose Sharks T-Shirts Womens , set another record for an expansion team in its inaugural season, and they also leapfrogged the Tampa Bay Lightning for the top spot in the NHL standings with 82 points.Reilly Smith had two goals and an assist to lead Vegas to a 6-3 win over the struggling Montreal Canadiens on Saturday night.Article continues below ...”It’s fantastic for us, it’s fantastic for the team, it’s fantastic for the fans – I love it,” Foley said. ”It’s really unbelievable and I wish Reilly would have gotten that last goal for a hat trick, because he deserves it.”Foley admitted when the season started he didn’t think he’d be doing interviews this late in the season, but with his team clearly headed to the playoffs, he didn’t mind fielding questions.”I knew we had a good team,” Foley said. ”When we did the expansion draft, it was a lot of hard work, and we put a lot of planning into it. We had five mock draft sessions in the expansion draft. We knew what we were getting. The result is what we have.”What Vegas has, is a team that improved to 22-4-2 at T-Mobile Arena, matching the 1979-80 Hartford Whalers (22-12-6) for the most home wins by a team in its first season.Since their 3-2 loss in Montreal on Nov. 7, the Golden Knights are 30-10-3 while the Canadiens are 15-21-6.Brad Hunt, Tomas Nosek
San Jose Sharks Hoodies Womens , Ryan Carpenter, Nate Schmidt also scored for Vegas, while Jonathan Marchessault had three assists. Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 30 shots, including a highlight-reel glove save on Charles Hudon skating in on a breakaway in the third period, to improve to 19-6-2.”We just want to play the same way that’s made us successful and keep going forward and not kind of relax a bit, we just want to stay with it,” Hunt said. ”We still got a lot of work to do. We just take it day by day, we’re not looking too far forward.”Hudon, Nikita Scherbak and Jonathan Drouin scored for Montreal. Antti Niemi started and gave up three goals on six shots before being replaced by Carey Price midway through the first period. Price, who came into the game having lost eight straight road games, finished with 24 saves.Montreal, which fell to 2-5-1 this month, has the league’s worst road record at 8-19-1. The Canadiens have lost 11 of their last 12 away from home and have been outscored 41-16 during the slide.”It’s always tough when you lose,” Scherbak said. ”We’re trying to stick together. We have a great group of guys here, everybody supports each other
San Jose Sharks Hats Womens , and nobody is happy to lose.”Smith got the scoring going with his seventh power-play goal of the season after taking Schmidt’s pass and one-time a laser past Niemi 2:16 into the game.The Golden Knights scored with the man advantage for the 12th time in 13 games, finishing 1 for 2 on the night. Vegas also improved to 24-3-0 when scoring the first goal of the game and their .889 win percentage when recording the opening mark leads the NHL.”First goal has been huge for us this year,” Smith said. ”Our record is pretty outstanding when we score the first one. But it’s teams like that, if you let them stay around, they’re the ones that are going to make you pay. Those leads are huge at the start and they help us out.”Hudon tied it a couple of minutes later, as he skated past Hunt and used a nifty move to beat Fleury.But Hunt made amends for losing Hudon down the boards when he drilled a slap shot from the point to put Vegas ahead. Nosek’s goal made it 3-1 and sent Niemi to the bench.Scherbak got his first goal of the season to cut the lead to 3-2 with 8:13 left in the opening period.Carpenter scored his fifth goal in seven games 3:07 into the second period, and Smith got his second of the game 37 seconds later to make it 5-2.Schmidt got his fifth on a pass from Smith to give Vegas a four-goal lead four minutes into the third.Just 13 seconds into a power play, Drouin fired a slap shot into the back of the net at 8:44 to close the scoring.NOTES: Montreal D Joe Morrow played in his 100th career game, while F Paul Byron played in his 100th consecutive game. … When Price entered the game he tied Patrick Roy for second in team history for most games played by a goalie. … Canadiens C Tomas Plekanec moved into seventh place for the most games played in team history. … Golden Knights defenseman Luca Sbisa is now one point away from 100 for his career.UP NEXTMontreal: At Philadelphia on Tuesday.Vegas: Hosts Anaheim on Monday. COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) The Columbus Blue Jackets backing into a playoff spot with an overtime loss to Pittsburgh on Thursday somehow seemed fitting, considering the weird season it’s been.The road to a second-straight postseason appearance – the first time in franchise history that’s happened – was pocked with potholes for the Blue Jackets. Major injuries, slumping stars and an NHL-worst power play seemed to doom them as the grinding days of midwinter wore on.Not like last year, when the surprising young team had juice, momentum, healthy players having career years and a stunning 16-game winning streak that was the talk of the league. The Blue Jackets cruised to the playoffs with 11 games left in the schedule.By the time February rolled around this time
Custom San Jose Sharks Jerseys , Columbus looked like an average team at best. The Blue Jackets lost eight of their first 11 games in the month and were slipping down the table in the rugged Metropolitan Division. A series of significant injuries to top players had coach John Tortorella piecing together lines from what was left and call-ups from the AHL team in Cleveland.The Feb. 26 trade deadline brought veteran forwards Thomas Vanek and Mark Letestu, as well as scrappy defenseman Ian Cole. After a pair of West Coast losses at the beginning of March, the Blue Jackets ripped off a 10-game winning streak on the way to winning 13 of 15 games.Still, it took three straight games of overcoming a three-goal deficit to get at least a point, and the overtime loss to Pittsburgh in the season’s penultimate game Thursday to earn a needed point and lock up a playoff spot. New Jersey and Philadelphia were always within a point or two, creating urgency every time the Blue Jackets stepped onto the ice in the past week.”There was a point that we stayed in it when we were playing lousy, we were banged up with injuries and we weren’t playing that well at certain times, even when some (injured) guys came back,” Tortorella said. ”We stayed in because (other teams) were losing. We’re just fortunate that we kept on winning when everybody else started winning. It’s crazy.”Crazy, indeed, considering key contributors Boone Jenner, Cam Atkinson, Alexander Wennberg, Seth Jones, Brandon Dubinsky and captain Nick Foligno all missed significant chunks of the schedule with injuries.The Blue Jackets wouldn’t be preparing for the postseason without Artemi Panarin
www.mapleleafsshoponline.com , brought to Columbus in an offseason trade with Chicago, and 19-year rookie sensation Pierre-Luc Dubois, who got his 48th point of the season Thursday night, breaking the franchise rookie record set by Zach Werenski last season.The 26-year-old Panarin has become the dangerous puck distributor and sniper the Blue Jackets had been seeking, getting 27 goals and 55 assists for a Columbus franchise record of 82 points. He’s put up 13 points in the last five games, including a pair of assists against Pittsburgh.Columbus is playing its grittiest hockey at just the right time.”I am absolutely thrilled,” Tortorella said. ”The amount of work they put in; we were dead and gone there a couple of months ago. I’m thrilled we get to experience what we’re going to experience here.”If they can beat Nashville in the regular-season finale Saturday, they have a chance to secure home-ice advantage for the first round of the postseason. That’s never happened in Columbus, either.”We’ve been playing our best stretch of hockey and coming together as a group, so obviously it’s a good time of year,” Jenner said. ”We have to keep going.”—
