In Las Vegas Tuesday night, the Golden Knights made sure their match with the Vancouver Canucks was decided early.
Vegas posted a 3-0 first period lead and went on to defeat the Canucks, 4-1.
In the process, the Knights did lose Marc-Andre Fleury to an injury in the first period.
He was hit in the mask by shot early in the frame.
“Not really, no. I haven’t heard anything yet,” Vegas head coach Gerard Gallant said on
Jonathan Marchessault had a goal for Vegas in win over Vancouver Tuesday night – File photo by Lewis Bleiman
Fleury’s status. “Trainers told me he’s not coming back tonight.”
Malcolm Subban finished the game and made 22 saves.
“I was just trying to think of making every save,” Subban said. “The guys made it pretty easy for me. A lot of shots were from the outside. It definitely made it easy for me.”
The Knights, who had been a bit listless are now 6-3-0 in their nine and got goals from Jonathan Marchessault, Cody Eakin, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, and Tomas Tatar in the win.
“As soon as we realized Subban was going in we were talking to each other in the locker room saying, ‘Let’s make sure to be strong for him,'” Bellemare said. “He hasn’t played in a while and he needed us to play a strong defensive game. I think we managed pretty well.”
Brandon Sutter scored the lone Canucks goal.
“I didn’t think we had the start we needed to to play against a good team,” Sutter said. “Teams like that that are fighting for playoff positioning, they’re playing well right now, and we’ve got to match it.”
Vegas improved to 47-21-5 and maintained an eight-point lead over the San Jose Sharks who defeated the New Jersey Devils Tuesday night.
“It was a good game, basically,” Bellemare said. “There was a lot of goals that were made because of good plays, not just because of lucky bounces. I think a lot of them were flowing in the system and it was fun.”
Subban had not started or played in over a month for Vegas.
“He looked real confident. It’s been over a month since he’s played. I was really impressed and happy with him,” Gallant commented on Subban.
[WATCH: All Canucks vs. Golden Knights highlights]
Jacob Markstrom made 24 saves in the loss.
“I thought our first wasn’t good enough and we played OK for two periods, but even OK against a team like this isn’t good enough. This is a very good team and we needed to be at our best to be in this,” the Canucks’ Daniel Sedin said after another loss.
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