Rolling the dice as the Vegas Golden Knights come to town

It’s Sunday evening. Your weekend is winding down. The upcoming work week looms. Existential dread overwhelms.

Anyways, that’s enough of that. The week ahead will be a little weird for the Bruins, as it’ll feature a single game and then an extended layoff. After Tuesday’s game, the B’s won’t play again until Friday the 31st, when they head to Winnipeg.

In fact, they might actually leave after the game Tuesday to begin the long drive to Winnipeg, as there’s no airport.

Regardless, it’s going to be a long time between games. As a result, let’s heap attention on the upcoming game against Lady Luck’s favorite team, the Las Vegas Golden Knights.

How are they doing?

Currently, the Golden Knights are experiencing turmoil for the first time in their young history. After an unprecedented run to the Cup Final in Year 1, they had an epic (and unfair) collapse in the playoffs last year.

They were doing relatively fine this year, and then they up and fired their coach a few days ago. Makes sense.

Who do they have?

Note: All numbers are as of Saturday afternoon.

The Golden Knights are loaded with talent on offense. Up front, names include Max Pacioretty (20 goals), Reilly Smith (19 goals), Mark Stone (17 goals), and Jonathan Marchessault (15 goals).

After that, you take a big step down to...oh, Paul Stastny. Not bad when a guy with that much talent is your fourth-best goal scorer.

Unsurprisingly, the Knights have a potent power play, the 8th-best in the league at 21.9%.

Marc-Andre Fleury remains their Number 1 in net, but old pal Malcolm Subban is his back-up. I maintain that Subban got a bit of a raw deal here in Boston, but I digress.

How have the Bruins done against them?

Here’s a fun fact for you, via Hockey Reference: The Bruins’ point percentage against the Vegas Golden Knights is their best against any active NHL team, and the third best of all time.

The Bruins’ point percentage against Las Vegas is .800, bested only by a .833 percentage against the St. Louis Eagles and a .917 percentage against the Philadelphia Quakers. Throwbacks, indeed.

The Bruins have played Vegas 5 times since they joined the league, and have gone 4-1-0 in those 5 games. One of those wins came earlier this year, a 4-3 win in the desert back in October.

The teams have matched up well thus far, though: in those 5 games, the Bruins have 4 wins but a goal differential of just +4, so...no real blowouts here.

See it for yourself

The next couple of weeks will be pretty weird for the Bruins schedule-wise, as the All-Star Break/bye week is looming, and then the Bruins will hit the road.

As a result, Tuesday’s game vs. the Golden Knights is actually the Bruins’ last home game of January. This means it’s your last chance to see the Bruins at home as January You. Who knows what you’ll be like in February?

Get tickets

It’s always kind of cool to see the more random Western Conference teams come to town, and cooler to see them in person.

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