The Vegas Golden Knights walked into Tuesday night still riding a three-game heater. They walked out of T-Mobile Arena with that streak gone, undone by a wild 6-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning in a game that never really settled into any kind of structure.
This wasn’t the kind of playoff-style grind fans have come to expect from these teams. It was loose, chaotic and full of broken plays, with the Lightning cashing in on a three-goal second period to take control. Anthony Cirelli scored twice in that frame, and Tampa Bay used the burst to hand Vegas its second home loss of the season.
The defeat also bumped the Knights out of the NHL’s top spot, with Carolina moving ahead of them. At 8-3, Vegas is still in a strong place, but Tuesday was a reminder that not every night has gone cleanly.
“We didn’t help ourselves,” Knights coach Ryan Craig said. “That’s the easiest way to put it.
“I thought we were a little out of rhythm and when you don’t manage the puck, you’re going to have trouble.”
Mark Stone put it more plainly when he described the kind of game Vegas had to absorb.
“You’re going to have games where it becomes wide-open and you have to adjust,” said Vegas’ Mark Stone. “Not every game is going to be the same.”
The Knights were hanging around early because Tampa Bay was just messy enough to keep them in it. Vegas trailed 2-2 after the first period, and both of its goals came out of the Lightning’s mistakes.
Ivan Barbashev tied things up after being left alone in front to bury the rebound of Mitch Marner’s shot. Later in the period, while Brayden McNabb was serving a holding penalty, Andrei Vasilevskiy failed to cleanly handle the puck behind his net. Braeden Bowman beat him to it, slipped it to Stone in front, and the captain finished for his team-high eighth goal of the year.
For a while, the night had a strange feel to it. McNabb and Shea Theodore both broke their sticks during a 4-on-4 sequence, and even with the ice opening up, the Lightning couldn’t finish the chance they had in what became a 4-on-2.
Tampa Bay did not stay wasteful for long. Cirelli kept the pressure on with his second-period scoring, Victor Hedman beat Carter Hart from just inside the blue line late in the frame to make it 5-2, and Nikita Kucherov later scored on a third-period breakaway to finish the job.
Hart had a rough night in net, giving up five goals on 14 shots through two periods. Long-distance shots have been an issue for him, and Hedman’s marker fit that pattern.
The Knights had enough sloppiness of their own to help the Lightning along, but they also had moments where the game still could have tilted back their way. Tampa Bay turned pucks over in its own end and gave Vegas odd-man rushes, which helped the Knights stay level through the opening period.
Stone didn’t sound interested in turning one rough night into a bigger alarm bell.
“I don’t think there’s a measuring stick game when it’s Game 11,” Stone said. “We’e still trying to build our game going forward. I still like where we’re at.
“You have to correct your mistakes and build on the good things.
We did do some good things. We had some chances. We just didn’t finish.”
The schedule now shifts quickly. Vegas heads to St.
Louis on Thursday and Columbus on Saturday before coming home next week for Ottawa and New Jersey. After that comes a longer trip to Boston, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Buffalo to start November, which should give a clearer picture of where the Knights really stand.
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