Golden Knights forward Reilly Smith said it best regarding the team’s power play after a loss in Game 3 of last year’s Stanley Cup semifinals. “It’s costing us the series right now.”

Three games later, Vegas was eliminated from the postseason, having gone 0-for-15 on the power play in the series. The Golden Knights are determined to make sure that sort of prolonged shutout doesn’t happen again.

Scoring on the man advantage is a point of emphasis for Vegas this season and will be a major source of scrutiny all year. With a refreshed focus and a couple of new players, there are reasons to believe this year’s power play will be better.

“The coaches are going to give us the structure,” forward Jonathan Marchessault says. “Everything is there, but we need, as players, to take pride and do the job. I don’t see how we cannot have a successful power play. I think we will.”

During the preseason and with power-play mainstay Alex Tuch sidelined, offseason acquisitions Evgenii Dadonov and Nolan Patrick both worked on the top unit to insert fresh blood.

Patrick has been solid throughout his career on the man advantage, while Dadonov has been lauded as a power-play dynamo in the past. In three years with Florida from 2017-2020, Dadonov racked up 25 goals and 47 points on the man advantage, including an 11-goal campaign two seasons ago. He has a lethal shot, arguably the best on the team when it’s on. Vegas is largely counting on him to flip its power-play fortunes.

Optimism doesn’t end there. It wasn’t that long ago that Vegas’ power play ranked among the upper half of the league. Two seasons ago, the Golden Knights 22% power-play rate was ninth in the NHL. It looked like Vegas could have one of the best units in the league, with Shea Theodore emerging as a legitimate Norris Trophy contender and point quarterback in his first full season next to Mark Stone and Max Pacioretty.

But the power play fell off last year, and there are just as many reasons to be pessimistic about the Golden Knights finding their form again. Those again might start with Dadonov, who mustered just one point and no goals on the power play with Ottawa last year. Patrick has 13 power-play points in his career, but eight of those came in his rookie season two years ago.

The Golden Knights have had a top-10 power play just once in their four seasons, and they’ve been in the bottom 10 twice. In those four combined seasons, Vegas ranks 19th in the NHL. In other words, the history of the Golden Knights simply hasn’t been a story of stellar power-play results.

There’s also the possibility that the power-play potential won’t be known until later in the season. Tuch should come back sometime in the second half, plus the Golden Knights have never failed to swing a deal at the trade deadline, scheduled for March 21 this season. If there’s an offensive player the front office covets, he could potentially change the look of the power play.

The Golden Knights feel better about their power play, but no one should be shamed for staying skeptical. It’s hard to say whether the team will bounce back or keep struggling, but it’s surely something the Golden Knights and their fans will stay focused on all season.

Who’s the Golden Knights’ enforcer post-Ryan Reaves? Maybe no one

George McPhee’s famous line when the Golden Knights acquired Ryan Reaves, and then extended his contract, was that the forward would help, “keep the flies off the honey.” The then-general manager and now-president of hockey operations wanted a physical presence, an enforcer, to keep the peace on the ice.

That would seem to imply the flies can descend freely now, since Reaves was traded to the New York Rangers this past offseason.

But Reaves didn’t fight as much as his reputation suggests. Reaves threw down just nine times in 209 games with the Golden Knights, according to the hockeyfights.com database. That’s about once every 23 games, a significant drop-off from his time with St. Louis, when he fought 56 times in 419 games—nearly once every seven games.

Reaves does depart as the Golden Knights’ all-time leader in fights, but Keegan Kolesar and even captain Mark Stone have dropped the gloves four times each. That speaks to a larger trend that shows the NHL is trending away from fighting. There were just 195 fights in last year’s pandemic-shortened season, a pace of about 286 fights during a full year. If that sounds like a lot, consider there were almost 100 more fights five years ago (372) and a whopping 803 fights in the 2001-2002 season.

The threat of Reaves going after the opposition might have been more necessary when the Golden Knights’ best players were less-physical skaters like William Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith. But in Stone and Max Pacioretty, the Golden Knights have acquired bigger stars, who are also more willing to duke it out.

So, do the Golden Knights really need a fighter? The front office doesn’t seem to think so anymore. Without a traditional enforcer on the roster this year, the answer will come soon.

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