William Karlsson Returns To Golden Knights’ Practice In Regular Jersey; Samsonov To Start Against The Kings

William Karlsson returned to practice yesterday in a non-contact jersey, and today was skating in a regular uniform.

HC Bruce Cassidy has already ruled Karlsson out for tonight’s game against the Los Angeles Kings but kept the door open for any return date after tonight. The Golden Knights’ next game is on Friday when they host the Ottawa Senators.

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Ilya Samsonov will start tonight’s game against the Kings earning back-to-back starts for the first time as a Golden Knight. Against the Florida Panthers, the 27-year-old netminder stopped 45 of the 49 shots he faced in an overtime loss.

The Golden Knights head into tonight’s game on a three-game losing streak but return home where they hold a perfect 3-0-0 record. With the defensive struggles they’ve faced to open the season, Cassidy has elected to change his defence pairings into something more familiar.

Related: Golden Knights’ Head Coach Elects To Change Defense Pairings

Golden Knights captain Mark Stone believes the issues the Golden Knights faced on their road trip are fixable and the changes they’ll be making will solve them.

“I think a lot of it comes with just being a little more aggressive at taking away time and space from the opponent coming through the neutral zone,” said Stone. “Teams play fast now. There’s not a ton of teams that lug the puck up the left and right side, chip and chase. All these teams are playing with heavy speed, so you have to do a better job at getting over top of that. So, it’s definitely something that we’re going to look at, and I think we fixed it pretty well, actually in Florida, I didn’t think we gave up a ton at all through the neutral zone a lot of the goals were, you know obviously had a power play goal had one in front and a couple in front of our net.”

Golden Knights projected lineup:

Barbashev-Eichel-Stone
Howden-Hertl-Dorofeyev
Brisson-Schwindt-Holtz
Pearson-Roy-Kolesar

Hanifin-Pietrangelo
McNabb-Theodore
Hague-Whitecloud

Samsonov
Hill

Kings projected lineup:

Byfield-Kopitar-Kempe
Fiala-Danualt-Moore
Foegele-Turcotte-Laferriere
Lee-Lewis-Jeanot

Anderson-Gavrikov
Edmunson-Spence
Jones-Clarke

Rittich
Copley

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