Cassidy: Golden Knights’ first half of loss to Predators the worst he has seen
Predators 5, Golden Knights 3
In the two and a half years that Bruce Cassidy has been head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights, the first 30 minutes of Tuesday’s game against the Nashville Predators was the worst he’s seen the Golden Knights play, he said.
While Pavel Dorofeyev’s first career hat trick willed Vegas back into the game, in the first period and first 10 minutes of the second period, the Predators buried the Golden Knights in a hole they couldn’t dig out of, falling 5-3.
In the first 20 minutes of the game, Vegas was outshot 11-1 and fell into a 2-0 deficit. In the first 10 minutes of the second period, it went down 4-0 and was outshot 7-1.
“I’ve never seen us that listless, get knocked off pucks and lose battles,” Cassidy said. “That’s certainly not us. That’s not the team I’m used to seeing. We’ll have to look a little closer at that in the next couple of days.”
The Golden Knights’ first shot of the game didn’t come until 2:35 minutes left in the period. It came from Shea Theodore, who took it from just past center ice.
“That shouldn’t happen,” Tanner Pearson said. “We have two shots in the first 30 minutes of the game. You can win too many games when you play half a game like that.”
The only driving force keeping the Golden Knights in the game was Dorofeyev. He scored three straight goals, eventually cutting the Predators’ lead to one.
Dorofeyev has now scored five times in the Golden Knights’ last two games. The scoring onslaught comes after Dorofeyev scored just twice from Nov. 29 to Jan. 11. He now leads the team in goals with 18. 
Cassidy jokingly called Dorofeyev’s hat trick “a waste” as the Golden Knights failed to come back.
“A guy scores a hat trick on the road, and you get no points,” Cassidy said. “That’s great for him. We needed one more goal. We needed four just to get points.”
Cassidy was blunt in saying the first 30 minutes of the game were the worst he’d ever seen from this group, and he could not pinpoint why the team had played so poorly.
Comparisons were drawn to the Golden Knights’ 4-2 loss to the Washington Capitals in October, in which a slow start was attributed to travel.
However, Cassidy said everything was off for the Golden Knights against the Predators and couldn’t just be cited as jet lag.
“Everything was a mess. That doesn’t usually happen,” Cassidy said. “Usually, you can shorten your bench to maybe three or two and a half lines for 10 minutes to find your way out of it… but, boy, it was tough. They were all struggling at the same time.” 
Vegas is still on the road for the next two games, traveling to Carolina on Friday and making a quick jump up to Chicago on Saturday.
One of the Golden Knights’ worst losses of the season was to the Hurricanes on Nov. 11. They gave up four straight goals, pulled Adin Hill for Henderson call-up Akira Schmid and lost 5-2.
