WARNINGLAK
Paraded to the penalty box
Took 5 penalties for 20 minutes (opponent: 3 for 14).
Cut the stick infractions — the penalty differential is a controllable.
The verdict · earned
The Golden Knights earned it — the game and the expected-goals battle both.
VGK 4 · LAK 2
Preseason · exhibition
Split squads and prospects, not the club that will take the ice in October. The shots and grades below describe this game only: nothing here counts toward season records, form, rankings or player numbers.
◆ By the ModelSep 22, 10:33 PMxG: heuristicEdited for clarityDrafted from NHL play-by-play by Backcheck's model, worded for clarity by an AI editor that may not change a number. Nobody at Backcheck was at the rink. How this works
Vegas won this one 4-2, but their power play had almost nothing to do with it. The Golden Knights went 0-for-4 with the man advantage — a flat F, the same grade the Kings earned going 0-for-2 of their own. League average on the power play runs around 21%. Both special-teams units were nowhere near it, which means a two-goal final margin came almost entirely from play at even strength, not from the man advantage either team was handed.
The Golden Knights built their cushion early. V. Kmec opened the scoring late in the first period, assisted by M. Sapovaliv and M. Gatcomb, and R. Lavoie made it 2-0 less than a minute later on a feed from T. Laczynski and B. Bowman. Los Angeles spent the rest of the game chasing. A. Lee got the Kings on the board in the second period, set up by K. Connors and S. Perunovich, and L. Pederson tied it at 2-2 in the third on a goal from C. Guttman and J. Wright — a game that had tightened right back up heading into the final minutes.
It didn't stay tight. J. Hallum, unassisted apart from V. Kmec's helper, put Vegas back in front at 3-2 in the third period, and the turning point of the night came later in that period when Hallum's shot found the empty net — J. Demek picking up the assist — to make it 4-2 and put the game away. Hallum finished with a two-goal night that bookended the third period and buried the Kings' comeback bid.
The number that actually explains how Vegas pulled away, though, isn't a shot count — the league's play-by-play feed carries no shot data for this game, so there's no chance-quality read to lean on here. It's penalties. Vegas took just 3 minor infractions for 14 minutes, while Los Angeles took 5 for 20 — a real discipline edge that shows up in the report card as an A- for Vegas against a D- for the Kings. Normally that kind of gap hands the cleaner team a power-play field day. It didn't here: Vegas's own power play went cold anyway, going 0-for-4 on the extra looks that Kings penalties created. The Golden Knights won this game in spite of their special teams, not because of them — the discipline advantage mattered less as a scoring source and more as a sign of which team was skating in control and which was chasing the puck.
That's the real story underneath the 4-2 final: a game where neither power play worked, decided instead by two quick strikes to open it and Hallum closing it out late.
Three Stars
- #59 J. Hallum (VGK) — 2G
- #74 V. Kmec (VGK) — 1G, 1A
- #13 J. Demek (VGK) — 1A