(Photo Credit: SinBin.vegas Photographer Brandon Andreasen)

The Golden Knights are currently ranked 14th in the NHL in penalty kill percentage. Their 81.2% mark has been steadily on the climb, though. After starting a bit slow, allowing five goals on the first 15 (66.7%), they’ve allowed just nine on the last 57 (84.2%).

The last 10 games have been even better as the Golden Knights have conceded just three times on 24 (87.5%) penalty kills. That was highlighted in the game against the Chicago Blackhawks, where the Golden Knights took three penalties to stop breakaways and failed on an offside challenge, yet managed to keep their penalty kill record clean, going a perfect five for five.

There wasn’t a lot of sustained pressure. One of the plays they like is Bedard to Bertuzzi on the back post, they’ve run that a lot and they burned us on it last year up there, I thought we took that away. When you start taking their options that they want to go to first, then that’s usually considered a win. -Bruce Cassidy

VGK’s primary penalty killers have not changed over the course of the season. On defense, it’s been mostly Brayden McNabb and Shea Theodore, followed by Zach Whitecloud and Noah Hanifin. Up front, Cassidy likes to use Jack Eichel and Mitch Marner together, then there are typically mixed combinations of Mark Stone, Colton Sissons, Brett Howden, Brandon Saad, and Reilly Smith (and William Karlsson when he was healthy).

They haven’t really changed their style at any point this season either.

I think our penalty kill, I really believe this, in general has been pretty solid all year. We’ve had a few go in that you look back and say maybe that shouldn’t have gone in or they got a fortunate bounce. The structure of it has been fairly consistent all year and I think you’ll see the number go up if we keep that up. -Cassidy

One place they have improved lately has been in keeping the penalty numbers down. Last game, they allowed five, but in the previous seven, they allowed two or fewer in all but one game and allowed three in that game. That’s much better than early in the season when they allowed three or more in seven of the first nine games.

The improved penalty kill has offset the decline in power play. VGK’s PP is down to 23.5% on the season after starting red hot. Overall, the Golden Knights’ special teams have a combined rate of 104.7%, the 9th best in the NHL.

Anything over 100 is a recipe for success. It’s the lesser thought about unit carrying the water lately.