‘Good time to refresh’: Bye week comes at perfect time for Knights

Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy is going to do his best to take advantage of his team’s extended break.

He wants to get his mind off the season and try to mentally reset ahead of what he hopes will be a stretch drive and another long playoff run.

He knows that may be easier said than done.

“It’s nice because you can sleep a little more and see your family a little more and just kind of put hockey away,” Cassidy said of his team being off until Feb. 6. “We’re just like everyone else, we have to try to park it. But I think for coaches during the season, it’s truly tough to put it aside for more than a day.

“I’m sure by Monday or Tuesday we’ll be rethinking some things and looking at what the schedule looks like and where we’re at for lineups and goalie rotations. But at the end of the day, it’s good for everyone.”

The league is staggering bye weeks this year to overlap with the Feb. 1-4 All-Star Weekend, and the Knights (29-15-6) began their bye Sunday after a road trip that concluded with a 5-2 loss Saturday in Detroit.

It’s a good time for the Knights to enjoy some time off. They are still missing several key players due to injury, including Jack Eichel, William Karlsson, Will Carrier and Shea Theodore. Pavel Dorofeyev missed Saturday’s game with an upper-body injury.

“We played a lot of hockey, probably one of the teams that has played the most so far,” captain Mark Stone said of a team that is tied with a league-high 50 games played. “We have a lot of guys banged up. Hopefully we get some guys back after the break and get some positive news back home. Good time to refresh. “

The Knights did get goaltender Adin Hill back on this road trip, and he looked healthy. The league’s leader in several goaltending categories stopped 76 of 80 shots in two victories on the road trip.

That gives the Knights the ability to rotate Hill and Logan Thompson, which was the plan going into the season and what served them well early in the year before Hill’s injury.

“It’s great to have Adin back,” Cassidy said. “You need two goalies in this league. He’s made it through two games on this trip, and now we get a little time off and hopefully other guys will start trickling back in. That will help the group.”

Rest should also help the healthy players, who have been taxed by a busy schedule and extra workload.

“We just have to use this time to get whatever you need to get done,” defenseman Zach Whitecloud said. “In this business, there’s a lot of travel. Now you get some family time, some time away from the facility and a little break from hockey. You get that mental and physical break.”

The Knights have plenty of positives to reflect on as they analyze where they stand at this point of the season. After a hot start, they came back to earth as they tried to figure out how to manage all the injuries.

Through it all, they still stand in second place in the Pacific Division. That’s not what has Cassidy’s attention, however.

“I’m not looking at where we are in the standings. It’s more about where your game is at,” Cassidy said. “We’re in better shape than we were two or three weeks ago. I feel like our game has come around. We’re far from perfect, and we know that. We still have a lot of stuff to clean up, but I like where we are. We’re not where we want to be, but we’re not far off either.”

The task coming out of the break will be a difficult one. The Edmonton Oilers visit T-Mobile Arena on Feb. 6 in search of an NHL record-tying 17th consecutive victory.

But the Knights have plenty of time before they have to start thinking about how to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.