LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Another Vegas Golden Knight is getting ready to celebrate a career milestone.
In February, Alex Pietrangelo celebrated his 1,000th career game and Alec Martinez celebrated his 800th career game. On Sunday, it will be Ivan Barbashev's turn as he celebrates his 500th career game in the National Hockey League. He jokingly said it will take some time before he reaches Petro's achievement.
"[That's] still a long way," Barbashev said. "I came here from Russia and there's a lot of things I had to learn about the defensive zone. When I was 16, I got to the Quebec league. It was an adjustment. Listen to your coach. That's what helped me through. I had a lot of great staff around me, great coaches, great teammates. They helped me a lot to be a better player."
Most of Barbashev's games have been spent playing with Pietrangelo, with the St. Louis Blues and the Vegas Golden Knights.
"I fee like I've probably been part of most of that, probably at least 350 to 400 of those," Pietrangelo said. "It has been fun to share that journey with him. I always find it fun when you have guys a little bit younger than you and you see them start a family and it's a special thing to watch."
Pietrangelo said he has also watched Barbashev grow and evolve into a versatile player.
"Wherever you need Barbie to play in the lineup, he's going to find a way. He's up and down the lineup. He's on the power play penalty kill. Those guys are hard to find. It's hard to find guys who are willing to do what he does night in and night out."
As the Vegas Golden Knights head into Sunday's game, they're also looking to turn things around and make a playoff push. Of the last 10 games, VGK went 3-7.
Head coach Bruce Cassidy said the team hung in there for several games and even had the lead going into the third period several times. However, he said the teams needs to find the same spark that fueled last year's Stanley Cup run in order to finish games.
"Part of it is our starts to every period. We need to be ready to go sooner. I think that's a shared responsibility. It's always on the coach to prepare your team and have a game plan but the individual has to be ready to go when he goes over the board," Cassidy said. "The second part is I feel the advantage we had last year, we did the little things that make your team hard to play against. When you talk about building your game, you talk about breakouts and transitions and all that stuff but also talking about building habits, checking habits, playing through people, making it hard for people to get on the forecheck, making it hard for them to get inside and get a rebound ... That sort of mentality is what we built last year, I thought, very well and through the playoffs did it better than anybody. That's the part, right now, that we have to get back."
Cassidy said team are noticing the change and are able to stay in games with VGK longer. However, he said he still has faith the team can get back to playing their game and find success.
"We can still get to that part of our game and be that team again but we have to decide to do it. We have to decide do we want to be that team again," Cassidy said. "We need the spark and consistency. I think we can get up to speed in a hurry because I've seen it. It's a coach's job to pull it out of them."
It's an early start on Sunday and puck-drop is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. on TNT.
