With three wins and six out of a possible eight points, the Detroit Red Wings have already secured themselves a winning record for a challenging five-game road trip that concludes Tuesday night in Las Vegas against the Vegas Golden Knights. But goaltender Cam Talbot says his team isn’t satisfied.
“Obviously, six out of eight is good, but we want eight points,” Talbot said after making 16 saves and stopping all four shootout tries in a 3-2 victory at San Jose on Sunday night. “We’re not going to take this one for granted. We’re going to go out there and make sure we finish off this road trip on a high note.”
Detroit holds a 7-6-0 all-time series edge against the Golden Knights, including 3-3-0 at T-Mobile Arena where it isn’t unusual to see a large showing of Red Wings jerseys.
Detroit enters the contest tied for first place in the Atlantic Division with the Montreal Canadiens with 18 points, four points ahead of third-place Tampa Bay.
“I think we need to win these games (and) look back at the end of the year and say, hey, that’s where we gained a couple of points,” defenseman Moritz Seider said.
Seider and Lucas Raymond both scored goals in the win over the Sharks while James van Riemsdyk scored the only goal of the shootout in the fourth round to give Detroit its fourth win in the last five games.
Seider said staying out of the penalty box and staying composed will be key for Detroit to knocking off Vegas.
“They obviously have some really high-end talent that can really score and make you pay on the power play,” Seider said. “I think we’ve just got to eliminate penalties, stay really composed, play really good road hockey, don’t be afraid to get behind their (defense), and just grind one out there.”
Vegas is just 1-2-1 in its last four games and comes in off a 4-2 home loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Friday afternoon, the first game of a season-long six-game homestand.
The Golden Knights took Saturday off and followed that up with a pair of practices.
“I think it’s big,” winger Ivan Barbashev said. “I don’t think we’ve practiced enough. … I think it’s important for us to get it going, fix some stuff. We didn’t do well in the previous games. Just try and get better.”
“We know we can be a lot better,” forward Keegan Kolesar added. “That’s big picture. We know there’s lapses in our game that are costing us, and I think now with this time home and a good amount of time to practice, we can start correcting some of our fundamentals that we lost that maybe contributed to some of these losses.”
Vegas is also expected to get a big boost with the return of defenseman Noah Hanifin from a lower-body injury suffered in a season-opening 6-5 shootout loss to the Los Angeles Kings on Oct. 8. Hanifin, who scored 10 goals and had 39 points in 80 games last season, took part in both practices and should provide a much-needed offensive spark to a defensive corps that has combined to score just one goal in the first 11 games.
