The Vegas Golden Knights improved to 5-0-0 to start the 2023-24 regular season after a 5-3 win over the Winnipeg Jets on Thursday night. It’s an impressive start for a franchise that’s only seven years old but coming off winning its first Stanley Cup championship.
On Friday’s episode of "Daily Faceoff Live," Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discuss the Golden Knights’ hot start and what’s led to them continuing their dominance of the NHL.
Tyler Yaremchuk: The Golden Knights are a perfect 5-0-0. What’s impressed me the most is the goal scoring: 19 goals for, second in the NHL, but they’re getting production from everywhere. Not only do they have five players averaging a point-per-game or better, they’ve had 14 different goal scorers already this season.
The depth and the way they can roll four lines and three pairings, with everyone on the same page, is really impressive.
Frank Seravalli: You were wondering how things might look. I don’t want to say they had some of their depth erode, but when you lose someone like Reilly Smith – yes you’re replacing him in the long-term with someone like Ivan Barbashev – but there’s always that question mark of how will this mesh.
As impressive as the scoring has been to start for the Golden Knights, what stands out to me more than anything, and what was really the recipe for their success for them to win the Stanley Cup last year, is their ability to defend. The way they’ve defended to this point is equally as good as it was in the playoffs.
What’s fascinating is how much all of these teams around the league have taken from the Golden Knights and head coach Bruce Cassidy’s system and set-up. More of a zone-defense style. It’s a copycat league, and it all emanated from the Golden Knights.
You can watch the full show here…
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