Cassidy's changes pay off as Golden Knights win 4-3

LAS VEGAS — Sometimes, actions do indeed speak louder than words.Bruce Cassidy figured he needed to shake things up Saturday after a lackluster effort by his Vegas Golden Knights less than 24 hours before when they were beaten by Montreal 4-1. He told veteran wingers Reilly Smith and Brandon Saad to take the evening off and inserted Alexander Holtz and Cole Reinhardt into the lineup against the San Jose Sharks.Did the ploy work? Decide for yourself. The Knights won, 4-3 at T-Mobile Arena to end November on a winning note. Vegas had a month to forget, going 5-4-5 and falling out of first place in the Pacific Division.“It’s not an indictment on Smitty and Saad,” Cassidy said. “Their game has been fine. I like Reinhardt on that fourth line and I think he can be part of an identity line we’re trying to build. That’s a good fit.“It came at the expense of two veteran guys and that’s no fun. My job wasn’t fun this morning talking to those guys. Holtzy I thought gave us a spark and he handled himself well. At the end of the day we win the game but it could have easily been the same with those other two in the lineup.”It was a night of firsts for some of the guys in the steel grey sweaters. Goaltender Carl Lindbom looked good enough to win his first game in the NHL after failing in six previous attempts. He stopped 18 shots in getting the W though San Jose’s outstanding young winger Will Smith beat Lindbom twice.His reward for finally achieving victory? A one-way ticket back to Henderson as the Knights will be activating Carter Hart on Monday after Hart’s three-game conditioning stint with the Silver Knights. We’ll see when Hart, who has not played an NHL game in nearly two years, gets the net, after he went on trial for sexual assault of a woman in Canada while in juniors and was acquitted of the charges. He could make his VGK debut as early as Tuesday when the Knights host Chicago. A more likely scenario is he plays on the team’s upcoming road trip that begins Friday in New Jersey against the Devils.“He’s a good kid who works really hard,” center Thomas Hertl, who scored twice Saturday against his former team, said of Lindbom. “We’re all really happy for him.”For Colton Sissons, who at age 32 is certainly no kid, he finally scored after being denied for the first 22 games.“It was a good hard play coming out of our end and fortunately it squeaked through the goalie and got it across the line and I found a way,” Sissons said of his first goal as a Golden Knight which was set up by Reinhardt. “We’ve been trying to go hard to the net and it hasn’t worked out too well for some of us so it was nice to be rewarded.”Mitch Marner, who had last scored a goal on Nov. 6 vs. Tampa Bay, finally got one to go in as he beat Alex Nedeljkovic with a wraparound in the second period that made it 3-1.But collectively, the Knights found themselves in a one-goal game entering the third period and found a way to stave off the Sharks, who play with great speed and grit. And it was a bit dicey in the final 33.2 seconds when Brayden McNabb was whistled for cross-checking and San Jose was looking for the equalizer while on a brief 6-on-4 advantage with its net empty.However, Lindbom stood tall and his teammates were diving all over the ice to block shots or win puck battles along the wall. It seemed like an eternity and when the final horn blew, Lindbom was mobbed by his teammates.“We’re all happy for him,” Sissons said. “He gives us everything he has and he’s such a hard worker. It was nice to see him finally get a win.”And as the Knights put November in their rear-view mirror, they do so in anticipation of a major change in their lineup in goal and perhaps getting center William Karlsson back at some point in December. Karlsson’s been out since suffering a lower-body injury Nov. 8 against Anaheim.“I think we’ll get better. I do,” Cassidy said. “I look at our month and it was uneven, but we were above .500 and in this league you get in trouble if you have months that are below .500.“Did we get the wins we wanted in those overtime situations? No. We need to make sure that when we get in those situations that we take care of business better. But we still had a month above .500 with different people in and out of the lineup. So we have to look at that objectively.“You have to understand there was a little bit of adversity and we were able to weather it and stay in a lot of games and get some wins. We have to look at it as a positive and try and have a good month of December and get a few wins that we should have gotten in those overtime games.”