The Swamp

As of today after only 31 games:

The Golden Knights are now 5-0 against the NHL’s conference semi-finalists from a year ago. They also have wins over every team that’s won the Cup since 2008, they’ve beaten every team in the Western Conference playoff positions, and they are 9-1-0 against the Pacific Division.

I look at that roster, and I still don't understand how this is happening. Especially when all of their goalies were going down like Spinal Tap drummers. (I did enjoy seeing Oskar Dansk play well in his few games there.) I want them to make the playoffs so badly.

I know that you're enjoying the hell out of this, Brian, and you should be.

Forgot to mention it but kind of weirdly proud that two different Pens fans on Thursday mentioned how hot the women at Vegas’ games are. They’re not wrong.

Like hotter than Pittsburgh???

I've always been of the opinion that, on average, the women at hockey games are much more attractive than those you see at football, baseball or basketball. The women at football games rank last.

The whole house of cards comes crashing down tonight!

Actually there's word of an actual flu (not Vegas flu) going through the team, and the Bolts morning skate was cancelled this morning.

govmentchedda wrote:The whole house of cards comes crashing down tonight!

Actually there's word of an actual flu (not Vegas flu) going through the team, and the Bolts morning skate was cancelled this morning.

Saw they cancelled the morning skate and that set some tongues a-wagging. Doubt we'll get the straight story until after the road trip is done if it's "real" flu.

I think the team was in town early enough to watch the last Sweet Golden Knights game in person. There have been comments in the paper (mainly from Cooper) about how great the experience was.

I wish I had the energy to stay up and watch the game live. Eff a 10 p.m. start though.

govmentchedda wrote:I think the team was in town early enough to watch the last Sweet Golden Knights game in person. There have been comments in the paper (mainly from Cooper) about how great the experience was.

I wish I had the energy to stay up and watch the game live. Eff a 10 p.m. start though.

Yeah, I saw some/most of the same stories. I know Cooper was there; I don't believe any of the players were (and who could blame them -- they were given the night off free and clear so why go watch hockey?)

That's a pretty entertaining half of a period. Lots of back and forth. Probably gonna fall asleep soon though.

McNabb 3 is the worst hockey player ever and should be suspicious for 10 games!

2-2 after 2! Remember in Vegas #TheHouseAlwaysWins

brian wrote:2-2 after 2! Remember in Vegas #TheHouseAlwaysWins

That's an awesome hashtag.

Going to a game with a buddy. parents friend's kid is a VP for T-Mobile so they are filling out the box against the islanders? on 1/25. I have been to Tmobile arena before, but never a live pro hockey game. Pretty excited.

blundercrush wrote:Going to a game with a buddy. parents friend's kid is a VP for T-Mobile so they are filling out the box against the islanders? on 1/25. I have been to Tmobile arena before, but never a live pro hockey game. Pretty excited.

Don’t know who has our seats that day but hit up Rams Fanny & me and we’ll meet up with you.

VGK takes on the Hawks tonight and I've spent the morning looking at some stats.

Holy shit.

I knew they had been overachieving. I knew that they weren't going to win every home game or whatever they were doing. But their point percentage is almost 72%, and they're averaging just under 3.5 GPG. Those are insane numbers for this team. Over half the league would take their second line of Perron/Haula/Neal without complaint, right?

Too much hype and pile on has happened already, but damn if the team doesn't deserve a bunch of the praise they're getting.

Hawks 4-1 tonight. Forsberg stands on his head.

BSF21 wrote:Over half the league would take their second line of Perron/Haula/Neal without complaint, right?

Ehhhhhhh. Maybe half the league would improve with that 2nd line but I don't see it as a legit contender 2nd line either. And James Neal is low man in shooting percentage among the three at 15.3%. Only 26 players w/ 1,000+ minutes last year were 15.3% or higher.

Damn. They just don't stop.

Steve of phpBB wrote:Damn. They just don't stop.

60 Minutes of Hell.

If you're looking for another reason to buy-in to VGK or jump on the Knights bandwagon, they now lead the NHL in even-strength goals.

60 points at the halfway point of the season. A point a game the rest of the way would be disappointing and still 101 points.

So if anyone is waiting for Vegas to get tripped up and struggle, well...this might be the time.

The schedule for the next month is pretty brutal but gets much more manageable after that. 10 out of the next 13 are on the road including a four-game road trip and a six-game road trip and most of the games are against some pretty good teams (@Nashville, @Washington, @Tampa, @Pittsburgh, @SJ, etc.) That also includes a few of the players (likely) and Gallant (definitely) having to fly cross-country for the All-Star weekend at the end of January.

After that, they only have two back-to-backs for the rest of the season and all of March they play every other day for the entire month, which will be a good warmup for the playoff schedule/grind.

So if they can get even just 14 or 15 points from that 13-game stretch, then it might be time to figure out where in T-Mobile the Pacific Division championship banner (and hopefully some others?) will go.

Mentioned this a couple of times, but starting to see a lot more pushback on how "easy" the expansion rules were in favor of Vegas*, so this was a well-timed article from the main Vegas fan website.

For the most part, I haven't seen anything that dumb in any kind of major media outlet, but opposing fans are starting to try and sell that narrative.

* - I think there's an argument to be made that the rules were very favorable long-term, definitely more favorable long-term than short-term. But the idea that the rules were configured to allow Vegas to be an immediately Stanley Cup contender are ridiculous.

Absolutely, unequivocally you should not be able to build a playoff team of under-30 expansion available players. If you got like 10 James Neal types where the teams were willing to lose the cap hit, maybe sneak in at the bottom, but what's happening shouldn't happen and the rules absolutely didn't cause this. AND, (ignoring chemistry or whatever) they could have been even better short term if they'd simply gone BPA in a few instances and taken Manson, de Haan, probably Grabner over Lindberg and I'm sure a couple others. They didn't max out short term and this is still happening and I don't get it and they should really thank Florida and Columbus.

mister d wrote:Absolutely, unequivocally you should not be able to build a playoff team of under-30 expansion available players. If you got like 10 James Neal types where the teams were willing to lose the cap hit, maybe sneak in at the bottom, but what's happening shouldn't happen and the rules absolutely didn't cause this. AND, (ignoring chemistry or whatever) they could have been even better short term if they'd simply gone BPA in a few instances and taken Manson, de Haan, probably Grabner over Lindberg and I'm sure a couple others. They didn't max out short term and this is still happening and I don't get it and they should really thank Florida and Columbus.

Yeh, I don't think many people minimize what Vegas has accomplished so far or blame it all on new expansion rules. I mean, it's well-documented that nobody expected this. I just marvel at it. Still can hardly believe it. There's plenty of teams with better looking rosters, even now that we've (positively) re-appraised the quality of a number of Vegas players. And, those teams are getting beaten by Vegas. A high shooting percentage explains a bit of it, but that's all.

But, I will say that the past is littered with great-looking regular season teams that didn't go far in the playoffs. I'm not predicting Vegas will stumble. Just saying that the playoffs are a bit of a crapshoot, so I'd caution against too much confidence.

Also some things just bounced the way they did. Minnesota holding out and making sure they didn’t lose Matt Dumba, giving up Tuch. Dumba has been disappointing and Tuch has been great. Just unknowns that have worked out pro Vegas.

Minnesota was in a bad spot regardless, made a little worse by trading Scandella ahead of the draft. Columbus and Florida could justifiably fire their GMs for no reason other than their decisions w/ Vegas.

mister d wrote:Minnesota was in a bad spot regardless, made a little worse by trading Scandella ahead of the draft. Columbus and Florida could justifiably fire their GMs for no reason other than their decisions w/ Vegas.

Florida has been a tire fire of mismanagement for couple seasons, now. Luckily, nobody notices.

Lindberg over Grabner was probably GMGM’s biggest miss in the draft. I mean he didn’t have many. He basically hit 18 for 22.

So the US Army not so excited about Vegas' brand...stupid
http://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/2204 ... ights-name

brian wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2018 10:41 pm Lindberg over Grabner was probably GMGM’s biggest miss in the draft. I mean he didn’t have many. He basically hit 18 for 22.

Rangers fans would have been thrilled if he'd gone the other way. As soon as I write off the current year I'll go right back to that.

Just heard Ron McLean on the Hot Stove say that there are 6000 Oilers fans in Vegas who plan on singing Happy Birthday to McDavid at 9:07 of the 1st period. Brian and Rams Fanny should drown them out!

All of the McDavid swooning by the HNIC crew may make the Vegas/Oilers game unwatchable tonight. Lets just hope Vegas scores on them early and often.

T-Mobile Arena will need extra scrubbing after this one.

DGen shittalking the Oilers in this thread is one of the favorite things about this year so far.

Both Vegas goals have been on McDavid. Floating around not taking his man.

So this is a thing that happened. Knights had a fan fest in downtown Las Vegas and drew 10,000 on a Sunday afternoon during the NFL playoffs. I'm not really sure if I know of a similar event in recent history that has drawn that many locals downtown.

The Fan Fest was originally scheduled for October 4, but the shooting happened on October 1.

Wow, only about 100 times smaller than the Rangers biggest non-game crowd.



(Lets ignore the date here.)