Vegas Golden Knights veteran defenseman Alex Pietrangelo is quietly on pace for an offensive career season.
Throughout his career, Pietrangelo has been known as an all-around defenseman who can punish his opponents offensively and shut down their best player. His playstyle and leadership have led to two Stanley Cups and multiple top-five Norris-voting finishes, with career-highs of 16 goals and 54 points.
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Through nine games this season, the 34-year-old has recorded 11 assists in his lowest time-on-ice average since his second season in the NHL when he played just nine games. Last night against the San Jose Sharks, Pietrangelo reminded the rest of the league that he still has the ability to be among the best defenders in the NHL.
According to Natural Stat Trick, at 5-on-5, the Golden Knights are outscoring opponents 15-10 and hold 50.76% of the expected goals with Pietrangelo on the ice. Pietrangelo said that his offensive explosion this season is “half luck” but his eagerness to jump up into the play has created numerous offensive opportunities for the Golden Knights’ forwards.
“Half of it’s luck,” said Pietrangelo. “Sometimes things just go your way. You go through stretches where you get a lot of opportunities and you score, and then you don’t score, and then you give guys opportunities and whatever, the puck rolls on all these weird bounces. It’s just, for now, everything’s working.”
HC Bruce Cassidy has always spoken highly of Pietrangelo and attributed his recent offensive success to his aggressiveness to jump into the play.
“I think that part of the game, he’s a student of the game, he’s been around a lot, seen a lot of different situations,” said Cassidy. “As for the assists, I think this year he’s timing his aggressiveness better. And by that, I mean he’s on time with his pinches. He’s on time when he decides to join the rush, keeping pucks alive, he seems to be there at the right times and have a second to make a play so his teammates can read off him to cover for him, or not. And he’s making good decisions with it. He’s finding the open guys. He’s made really good plays. Probably hasn’t shot as much, maybe as before, looking for those plays. We’ve tried to bake some of that into our offensive zone play, where we’re looking for people, balancing that with getting a puck to the net for second chances and looking for people off net or tips or whatnot. So I think he’s really bought into that part of it. He’s looked really good.”
The Golden Knights and Pietrangelo have been a different team at T-Mobile Arena than when they are on the road. In three road games, they gave up four goals in each game. At home, they’ve given up four goals just twice in six games. Pietrangelo believes the team defends better at home and is part of the reason for the dynamic offense they’ve displayed in their home barn.
“Well, I think a lot of our goals are coming from good defense. I think we’re defending really well at home, and that’s a big part of it. Just our work ethic has been pretty good at home. Look, we had one road trip. It’s easy to say that we’re not playing well on the road, but we have a couple of road games coming up here, so hopefully carry that momentum over.”
Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, Ivan Barbashev and Tomas Hertl are off to league-leading starts which has taken some of the spotlight from Pietrangelo, but internally, the Golden Knights know how important and valuable the King City, Ontario native is.
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