s24 - Golden surprises [WB3]

Vegas, NV - The Vegas Golden Knights have come flying out of the gates to begin the VHL’s 24th season skating to 14 wins in their first 16 games.

A feat Vegas General Manager David Zammit has never come close to seeing from any of his teams up until this year. 

“Perhaps we’re building off a great post-season last year when we came within two wins of a Stanley Cup Final berth,” he told reporters recently.

Aside from the team running roughshod on the league to date, they’re a pile of surprises within team.

Let’s start with maybe the lone dud, centreman Val Filppula. The Finnish forward was drafted and developed in the organization only to leave via trade a few seasons ago. Well Vegas was able to bring him back and so far he’s been bad. He has three goals and just one assist in 16 games as 2C. He also has a team worst -4.

Now let’s jump over to positives.

Maybe the biggest is how effective the redesigned third line has been of Shawn Matthias, Patrik Berglund, and Nikolai Kulemin. The three have combined for 15 goals, 20 assists, and a +27. 

Number one centre Henrik Sedin is a great story too. He set a career high in points last year with his first campaign in Vegas with 75 points. He already has 22 points in 16 games with nine of them as goals. His career high in goals is 34.

Another one is top four defenceman Robyn Regher going ham offensively. He only had 10 points last year in 84 games. He’s already at that mark in 16 contests.

And the last one, Vegas only had eight wins in 23 starts from their backups last year. An offseason change brought in Rob Zepp who has half that number of wins in just five starts already.