Golden Knights Mastering the Art of Gritty Wins — and Growing Stronger Because of It
Vegas Golden Knights vs Washington Capitals at Capital One Arena. October 10th 2018. Photo taken by All Pro Reels
Written by Gina Anton
LAS VEGAS — The Vegas Golden Knights have built their reputation on precision. Structured defense. Relentless systems. Goaltending that masks mistakes before anyone notices them.
But Thursday night at T-Mobile Arena, that version of Vegas didn’t show up. The one that did was messy, reactive, even reckless — and it still found a way to win.
Vegas outlasted the Boston Bruins 6-5, improving to 3-0-2 on the season, in a game that looked more like a track meet than a chess match.
“This was one of our more — it might sound funny in a 6-5 game — complete games offensively,” coach Bruce Cassidy said afterward to the Los Vegas Sun “I thought we were the better team most of the night.”
He wasn’t wrong. But he wasn’t celebrating, either.
A Team in Transition
The Knights have spent the past few seasons mastering control. They smother opponents, drain the clock, and win on discipline. Thursday night, none of that was working.
Their starting goalie, Adin Hill, was in street clothes after tweaking a lower-body injury in Calgary earlier in the week. Backup Akira Schmid got the nod again, and the team’s defensive focus immediately shifted from “structure” to “survival.”
Boston’s Tanner Jeannot scored two minutes into the game by parking himself in front of Schmid and shoving a rebound home — the kind of gritty goal the old Knights rarely allowed.
But this version of Vegas didn’t panic. It adjusted.
“You’re going to have breakdowns,” defenseman Zach Whitecloud said. “ It’s how we’re going to work out of those breakdown as a group because some of those things can snowball.”
That line — “how we work out of them” — might define this early season more than any stat.
Evolving Through Imperfection
For a team that once prided itself on control, Vegas has leaned into improvisation. Against Boston, offense became defense by necessity.
William Karlsson — the longest-tenured Knight — scored twice in four minutes, one on the power play and another shorthanded, flipping the game’s momentum almost single-handedly.
Those goals came during a stretch that looked more like a street fight than a system. Pucks bounced off bodies. Line changes were chaotic. Schmid had to face point-blank chances. But somehow, Vegas thrived in it.
Tomas Hertl’s rebound goal off a missed shot by Pavel Dorofeyev underscored the same point: this team isn’t winning by playing clean hockey right now. It’s winning by playing real hockey — unpredictable, human, and occasionally reckless.
“I was actually surprised Pav missed that because he’s always scoring now,” Hertl said, laughing. “But I just tried to get to the net, fight it, and it ended up in the net.”
The Identity Behind the Chaos
Cassidy’s teams have always been defensively disciplined — in Boston and now in Vegas. But this group, at least in October, seems to be testing the limits of what “Golden Knights hockey” even means.
Can a team built on structure find new ways to win when that structure breaks down?
The signs suggest yes.
Vegas fired 37 shots at Boston’s Jeremy Swayman, and even when the Bruins clawed back to make it 6-5 midway through the third, the Knights didn’t retreat. They kept attacking. They trusted their offense — something that once felt secondary in Cassidy’s system.
“We gave up a couple easy goals,” Hertl admitted, “but we didn’t give many chances overall. We just have to keep doing it.”
The Power of Adaptation
In some ways, the Knights’ messy win told a bigger story: they’re learning how to be more than their system. Injuries, lineup shifts, and even off-ice headlines — like Thursday’s signing of goalie Carter Hart, who won’t play until December — have forced them to evolve.
They’re not the methodical machine that hoisted the Stanley Cup two years ago. They’re something rougher, riskier — but perhaps more resilient.
Maybe that’s what early-season hockey is supposed to look like: less about dominance, more about figuring out what works.
And for the Golden Knights, winning ugly might be the best for them to grow.
