Call it the dog days of winter.
The Vegas Golden Knights dropped a sloppy 5-4 shootout decision against the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday — their fourth straight loss and six in seven.
But head coach Bruce Cassidy isn't sounding the alarm on his Pacific Division-leading team just yet.
"Nobody's panicking, I'll say that. We're not in the room tearing the walls down. ... Every team goes through it — we just can't go through it much longer," Cassidy said following the game.
Jack Eichel and Pavel Dorofeyev scored for Vegas inside the final four minutes to tie the game and force overtime, the latter with an extra attacker on the ice and 30 seconds left in regulation.
But the Golden Knights were only in that desperate position to begin with after they allowed the Blues to score in the final minute of each of the first two periods.
"Good teams typically don't do that. We're a good team and we should stop doing it if we expect to win because there's a lot of different areas of our game that's self inflicted. I thought tonight we left some plays on the table that were there," Cassidy said.
St. Louis, which has a 12-8-8 record against the Golden Knights, improved to 4-1-1 in its last six games played in Vegas.
Brayden Schenn, Jake Neighbours, Nathan Walker and Cam Fowler scored for the Blues in regulation. Jordan Binnington made 28 saves, while Schenn and Neighbours found twine once again in the shootout.
Cassidy said the team-wide malaise stretches from his top line featuring Mark Stone and Ivan Barbashev to goalie Adin Hill, who is one of three netminders named to Team Canada for the 4 Nations Face-Off.
"These are plays I know we're gonna make. I know we're gonna make 'em. Stoney and Barby — the opportunities are there for that line. They're just a little bit off. So I believe when we start making those, the self-inflicted stuff will go away because everything won't be magnified because we'll be playing better offensively," Cassidy said.
Hill stopped 24 pucks with an .857 save percentage in the loss.
"You need big saves to pick you up. It's a game of mistakes. We're not gonna be clean every night. That's where you need to be bailed out sometimes and that's the timing of it too," Cassidy said.
St. Louis inched closer in the Western Conference playoff race and is now tied with Vancouver, both with 50 points and one point shy of Calgary for the second wild-card spot.
Tomas Hertl and Brett Howden each added a goal while Shea Theodore had four assists for the Golden Knights.
Despite the loss, Vegas moved one point ahead of idle Edmonton in the Pacific.
Takeaways
Blues: Since Dec. 23, the Blues have scored an NHL-best 51 goals and average a league-high 3.92 goals per game.
Golden Knights: Hertl, who scored his ninth power-play goal of the season, has 10 points (5 goals, 5 assists) the last six games.
Key moment
With an extra attacker, the Golden Knights worked the puck around the offensive zone to perfection, with Theodore finding Dorofeyev, who fired the game-tying goal past Binnington to tie the game at 4-all.
Key stat
Nine of the 15 games the Knights have hosted St. Louis have gone to overtime, including three shootouts. The Golden Knights had won six of the first eight that went past regulation before Monday’s loss.
Up next
The teams meet again and conclude a home-and-home series in St. Louis on Thursday.
"We have a couple days between game so fatigue factor should be gone and hopefully we're fresher and have a better energy level in St. Louis," Cassidy said.
--with files from Sportsnet
