LAS VEGAS — You don’t hear boos too often at Golden Knights games at T-Mobile Arena. But when you can’t hit the net, when your power play is abysmal and your defensemen got spun around like a top, well …

For those who were watching the Knights fall to the Florida Panthers 3-2 Monday night from the comfort of their living room or Man Cave, it was simple — turn the channel. But if you were one of the 17,812 inside The Fortress, you had two choices — stay and voice your displeasure, or get up and leave and retrieve your car after paying $35 to park.

Yes, the Knights are a banged up bunch. William Karlsson, who was injured in the first period of Saturday’s overtime loss to Anaheim, was not in the lineup Monday against the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers, who are missing a few key guys themselves.

No Sasha Barkov. No Matthew Tkachuk. No Dmitry Kulikov. No Tomas Nosek (remember him VGK fans?). And no excuses from Paul Maurice. The Cats’ coach just rolls who he has over the boards and away they go.

So if you’re Bruce Cassidy, you can’t bemoan the fact you don’t have Mark Stone or Adin Hill or Karlsson. That you’re playing a minor-league goalie in Carl Lindbom who is doing his best when getting the call but has yet to win a game in four starts. Or that you’ve got a bunch of snake-bit veterans led by Reilly Smith and Brandon Saad that are struggling so much offensively, it might be wise to bring their sticks to a priest and have him perform an exorcism on them.

But Cassidy’s not going to make excuses for his team, which continues to shoot blanks on its power play, continues to have trouble exiting its defensive zone cleanly, turns the puck over in its own end far too often and on those occasions it has a good look in the other team’s end, fails to finish.

And nor should his players for that matter. Right now, there’s a lot to fix and not a lot of time in which to do it. Vegas has had a homestand to forget, going 1-3-1 so far with the suddenly improved New York Islanders coming to T-Mobile Thursday with their exciting rookie defenseman Matthew Schaefer.

“We have to minimize the damage,” Cassidy said. “Our power play is what let us down. We had a two-man advantage and did nothing with it. We didn’t hit the net and our zone entries weren’t clean.”

An 0-for-3 night with the man advantage in what amounted to a one-goal margin is a killer. And even though Florida missed the net more with its shooting than Vegas (17 missed shots for the Panthers, 13 for the Knights), to win the game on the one shot on goal the Cats had in the third period which went in is crushing.

After clawing their way back on Tomas Hertl’s goal early in the third period to cut the deficit to 2-1, Vegas surrendered a power play goal to Sam Reinhart on what would ultimately be Florida’s lone shot on goal for the period and the Knights were back chasing down two again. And when Ivan Barbashev once again trimmed the Panthers’ lead to 3-2 with a nice play that saw him glove a fluttering puck down to his stick, then put it over the shoulder of Sergei Bobrovsky and in, there was hope among those who had stuck around.

But that was as close as the Knights would get as Bobrovsky said ‘No more” and his teammates saw to it that it would be them, not the home team, that would celebrate after the final buzzer.

Such is life in VGK land these days.

“We have to start in the first and second (periods and the team has to fight for it,” said Hertl. “We have to figure it out on the power play.”

It’s a power play that since Oct. 20 is just 3 for 29. That’s when Mark Stone left the lineup and hasn’t returned as he’s on LTIR.

“Our third periods the last couple of games have been unbelievable,” Barbashev said. “We have to be better at puck drop. Our first and second periods have not been much good.

“We just have to find a way. We’re not scoring a lot of goals like we used to be so we have to keep working, keep playing and be ready to play at the beginning like we’ve been playing in the third period.”

The one thing the Knights (7-4-4) have going for them? It’s a long season and there’s time to turn things around. Still, they’re tied for second place in the Pacific Division with the Kings, Kraken and Oilers with 18 points apiece, all of whom are five points behind the division-leading Ducks.

“There’s going to be ups and downs,”Hertl said. “You’re going to have injuries. It’s an 82-game season but you want to get (two) points every time you go out there.”

Monday, there were two points to be had. But the Knights came away with none. And it’s why the boos rained down on them.