John Locher/AP
Vegas Golden Knights left wing Max Pacioretty (67) celebrates after scoring against the Edmonton Oilers during the first period of an NHL hockey game Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020, in Las Vegas.
Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2020 | 2 a.m.
Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford gloved a Max Pacioretty wrister in the opening minutes of the Vegas Golden Knights’ round of 16 NHL playoff series against the Chicago Blackhawks in routine fashion. Pacioretty grinned anyway.
Vegas’ leading scorer from the regular season joked on the broadcast that his first game back from an undisclosed injury was mostly spent trying to catch his breath and get up to game speed. He couldn’t hide his joy, however, as Pacioretty seemed to relish joining his team on the ice in the Western Conference bubble in Edmonton after a slight delay as much as they enjoyed his return.
“It was nice to have him back,” Vegas coach Peter DeBoer said. “I think we got a guy who hasn’t played in a few weeks so he was working his way into it. I think he got better as the game went on, like our team did.”
Vegas cruised to a 4-1 victory as Pacioretty worked on getting his legs back, failing to score or make much of an imprint on the stat sheet other than tallying four shots. And yet, his smiling mug should have been the most welcome sight of the game for Golden Knights’ fans.
Vegas can handle Chicago — a team that had no business being in the postseason until the NHL inexplicably expanded the format to include 24 teams — in this series without Pacioretty. It handled three much better teams — Colorado, St. Louis and Dallas — without him in the qualifying round robin.
But it’s harder to see the Golden Knights winning the Stanley Cup without him. They’re deep and fortunate enough to have a star like Mark Stone who can raise the game of everyone in his vicinity but replacing Pacioretty’s 32 goals and 66 points from the regular season wasn’t going to come easily.
And as days stretched to weeks, and as the Golden Knights traveled to Edmonton without their top-line left winger, it was natural to wonder if everything was as under control as DeBoer and the front office long promised. The first of four necessary victories over the Blackhawks to advance showed they were telling the truth.
Considering it was his first game in more than five months and after his training camp was cut short, Pacioretty looked better than he’s being given credit. The -1 next to his name in the plus-minus column of the box score shows the limitations of that statistic.
The Golden Knights were dominant when Pacioretty was on the ice. They generated five high-danger scoring chances to the Blackhawks’ one, accounting for 1.03 expected goals to their opponents’ 0.2.
DeBoer’s continued use of a line putting Pacioretty alongside Stone and Willim Karlsson gives the Golden Knights something it’s arguably never had before — an elite two-way group that should strike fear in any team in the league. Sure, they didn’t score in their postseason reunion, but they came close.
Pacioretty just missed burying a closer range shot in the net later in the first period and failed to secure an ensuing rebound, but those are the type of first-game-back jitters to be expected.
“He got a couple shots off and you could see how dangerous he is when he gets back to feeling like he’s in game shape,” DeBoer said. “It was a good step toward that tonight.”
There are certain hazards to sharing the ice with such potent linemates, another area where Pacioretty got a reminder on Tuesday night. Late in the game, he took a puck fired by Stone hard to the upper leg.
Pacioretty shook his head, grimaced and headed to the bench. But he was smiling again a minute or so later as he headed back on the ice for another shift.
He may have arrived to Edmonton late, but if Pacioretty stays as happy as he looked Thursday, then he and his teammates are going to be there for a long time to come.
Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.
