(Photo Credit: SinBin.vegas Photographer Brandon Andreasen)
The Golden Knights’ 9th season has been a bit bumpier than most of the previous eight. The team still sits in 1st place mainly because the Pacific Division is as bad as it has been since Vegas entered the league (which is really saying something), but the simple fact that they once again have more losses than wins will inevitably cause fans concerns.
In hockey, when a team is performing worse than expected, the blame always tends to fall on the shoulders of two people.
First, the head coach.
Earlier this year, Dean Evason took the fall in Columbus. In Los Angeles, there are calls for Jim Hiller’s head nightly. And fans of teams in Nashville, Vancouver, St. Louis, Toronto, and Ottawa are all asking questions of the man standing behind the bench.
Here in Vegas, that has cropped up a little bit, especially during the recent losing streak, but the winning streak that followed directly after quelled most of it, and for good reason, as the Golden Knights have a Top 5, if not the best, coach in the NHL.
So, onto the second guy, the goalie.
Boy, are the pitchforks out in Vegas for Adin Hill.
Looking at the numbers, it makes sense. In his four games since returning from injury, Hill has allowed 17 goals in four starts while posting a .825 save percentage. His last start that generated better than a .900 save percentage was in mid-October, and the advanced stats have plummeted with Hill now carrying a -9.8 goals saved above expected number, 83rd out of 90 in the NHL.
However, as much as hockey fans don’t want to admit it, keeping the puck out of the net is a team game. There’s no better example of it than last night in Ottawa. Two goals went in off Golden Knights players, two were deflections on shots from the blue line, and the other three were shots from directly in front of the goal. VGK turned the puck over at an alarming rate, they were weak in stick battles, and got outskated by a team playing on the second night of a back-to-back.
Could Adin Hill have done better last night? Sure. But, even if he had the best game in the history of NHL goaltending, VGK still would have lost the game by multiple goals because they didn’t score for the first 55 minutes of the game.
The game is a microcosm of the season for VGK goalies, and while their performances as a collective group may not truly deserve the advocacy they’re about to get, the outward hate towards Vegas netminders, and Adin Hill in particular, this season has grown to a fever pitch that deserves opposition.
The Golden Knights roster has changed a lot in the last few seasons, and nowhere is it more noticeable than on defense. Shea Theodore has stepped into the 1A role, taking over for Alex Pietrangelo. Noah Hanifin is playing big minutes, replacing Alec Martinez. Kaedan Korczak, Jeremy Lauzon, and Ben Hutton are filling the roles formerly occupied by Zach Whitecloud and Nic Hague. The collective group has essentially changed one through six, and the new unit is much more offensive-minded than the previous one. This is only going to be exacerbated by the addition of Rasmus Andersson as well.
Up front, VGK have also lost a number of their most important defensive forwards. Chandler Stephenson, Michael Amadio, Nic Roy, and William Carrier are all gone, and an injury to William Karlsson has kept him off the ice for most of the season.
Simply put, the group in front of the goaltenders is nowhere near as defensively sound as the one that helped lead the Golden Knights to a Stanley Cup.
It’s easy to watch the puck go into the net and blame the goaltender, but when it happens to every goalie that goes into the net, it should make logical sense to start looking outward.
Adin Hill is the constant, not the variable. He was the one in the net when the Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup, he was the one in the goal for 50 starts last season, and he has been between the pipes for 30 of the last 34 playoff games. He has shown, time and time again, that he is capable of putting up stellar goaltending performances when the play in front of him is at a championship level.
Now, this season, when it hasn’t, it makes little to no sense to place all of the blame at his feet.
It’s not hard to admit that he, along with Akira Schmid, Carter Hart, and Carl Lindbom, could have played better in the Vegas net. But the difference this year is not standing in the crease. If the new look skater group gets back to defending the way VGK did in 2023, this collection of goaltenders will get the job done far more often than not.
Goalies should never be completely free from blame. Every time the puck goes in the net, the last line of defense failed. However, when assessing why it’s happening over and over again with four different goalies in the net, including one that has won a Stanley Cup, blame should lie at the skates of the variable, not the constant.
