DETROIT (AP) The Vegas Golden Knights turned their expansion season into a special one by making a lot of good decisions.Like the addition of goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury.”He makes an expansion team not be an expansion team Womens Brayden Point Jersey ,” Vegas coach Gerard Gallant said.No one outside the organization expected the Pacific Division-leading Golden Knights to be this good so fast. With less than a month left in the regular season, they easily have the largest divisional lead and are chasing Nashville for the most points in the Western Conference.The odds are not long that Vegas could hoist the Stanley Cup.”The expectations weren’t high, but we all thought we could be better and we showed it,” Fleury said after his 47th career shutout, a 4-0 win in Detroit. ”Sometimes earlier in the season, I would wonder, `Wow. Are we really still in that position?’ And, we kept winning and holding strong in the standings.”Fleury has a lot to do the startling success.Pittsburgh left him unprotected in the expansion draft after he waived his no-movement clause, allowing the Penguins to keep 23-year-old Matt Murray after he led the franchise to its second straight Stanley Cup championship.”I had a good idea it was going to happen, but you’re never sure until your name is called,” Fleury said. ”I was still in a shock for me and my family. But the organization in Vegas from the staff, the coaches, the GM Braydon Coburn Jersey , the owner, was very welcoming and helped us with the transition.”The Penguins even gave Vegas a second-round pick in 2020 to take Fleury, who had two years and more than $11 million left on his contract. He has provided a return on the investment.”The fit has been perfect,” Golden Knights general manager George McPhee said. ”His leadership was something we wanted for our locker room.”Fleury ranks among the league leaders with career bests in goals-against average (2.15) and save percentage (.930). He also became a three-time All-Star this season.”I feel pretty good, but my teammates have been good in front of me,” he said. ”By blocking shots and clearing rebounds away, that makes me look better.”Fleury has won 25 of 37 starts in a season stunted only by a concussion that kept him out of the lineup for two months. Earlier this week, he became the 13th goaltender in NHL history to win 400 games , trailing just Roberto Luongo and Henrik Lundqvist among active players.”At the start of the year, he was our best player,” Vegas forward David Perron said. ”When he got hurt, we found out we had a really good team because we kept winning. Then, we got him back and we took another step and we haven’t stopped.”GAME OF THE WEEKBoston at Tampa Bay on Saturday night J.T. Miller Jersey , the second of their four scheduled games. The winner of the season series increasing their chance at securing the Presidents’ Trophy for having the most points in the NHL and earning home-ice advantage through the playoffs. In the first matchup on Nov. 29, Brad Marchand had two assists in the first period and the Bruins scored the first three goals in a 3-2 win at home over the Lightning.LEADERSThrough Tuesday’s games:Goals: Alex Ovechkin (Washington), 42; Assists: Jakub Voracek (Philadelphia) and Blake Wheeler (Winnipeg), 59; Points: Nikita Kucherov (Tampa Bay), 91; Wins: Andrei Vasilevskiy (Tampa Bay), 40; Goals-against average: Carter Hutton (St. Louis), 2.02; Save percentage: Hutton, .934.— GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) — The Arizona Coyotes lost four of their first five games, three by shutout.Another lost season in the desert apparently on the way.The thing about those early games, though, is they were close, unlike the start of last season. The Coyotes played well Womens Charlie McAvoy Jersey , just couldn’t seem to catch the right break or get pucks to find the net.Once the pucks started going in, the Coyotes couldn’t seem to miss.Behind a scoring flurry that would have been unthinkable on previous teams, Arizona is off to its best 11-game start (6-5-0) since 2013-14.“I really like all our games; we played well in all of them, we competed well,” Coyotes forward Derek Stepan said. “Yeah, we made some mistakes that cost us some goals early on, but we’re learning quickly.”It’s been a long-arching curve.The Coyotes have struggled since reaching the 2012 Western Conference finals, seeming to be in perpetual rebuilding mode. Arizona got last season off to a miserable start, needing 12 games to win for the first time to fall out of playoff contention before the season’s first month was over.The Coyotes played better the last two months of the 2017-18 season and hoped it would carry over into this season.It did not, at least early.Arizona opened the season with a pair of shutout losses and had four goals its first five games — three of those in its lone win.Then something clicked.The Coyotes beat the Chicago Blackhawks 4-1 on the road on Oct. 18 and, after a 5-3 loss at Winnipeg, have been one of the NHL’s hottest teams.With Tuesday night’s 5-1 home win over Ottawa, the Coyotes have outscored opponents 20-4 during a four-game winning streak. Arizona has 27 goals over a six-game span Authentic Louis Domingue Jersey , a first for the franchise since 2006-07.“The guys were sticking with it and practicing like the goals would come,” Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet said. “You have to have that mentality in this league. We’ve got good mojo right now and we don’t want to wreck it.”Arizona has been among the league leaders in shots per game since the start of the season and the shooting percentage has dramatically increased since the minuscule 1.6 to start the season.The Coyotes seemed to get some bad breaks on shots early in the season, hitting posts and crossbars, having pucks squirt out of their reach in the offensive zone. They also didn’t seem to create their own luck by getting traffic in front of the crease and putting shots in spots where goalies could make easy saves.The breaks have been coming the past few games, such as Stepan’s blue line, short-handed goal that skittered off the ice and through Ottawa goalie Mike Condon’s pads .Arizona also has been creating some of that luck with hard, smart play, getting traffic in front of opposing goaltenders and more precise shooting.“You earn your bounces,” Stepan said. “We had some bounces going the other way early on in the year, now they’re starting to go our way and in a few weeks, they’re going to come back the other way. Good teams find ways to win any given night regardless of the bounces.”With the scoring boost, the Coyotes have continued to play stingy defense, the one area that helped them get through the difficult times in the past.Arizona has limited good chances against and its goalies http://www.officiallightningprostore.com/authentic-adidas-mikhail-sergachev-jersey , Antti Raanta and Darcy Kuemper, have been superb, combining to give the Coyotes the NHL’s best goals-against average at 1.91. Raanta, healthy after an injury-filled first season in the desert, is fourth in the NHL with a 1.99 goals-against average.The Coyotes also have the NHL’s second-best penalty kill at 90.6 percent and have a league-high six short-handed goals to three power-play goals allowed. Stepan’s goal against Ottawa gave Arizona short-handed goals in three straight games for the second time in franchise history (1985). The Coyotes are 11th NHL team since 1933 to have five short-handed goals in three games.“When we’re sticking with our game plan and everybody is dialed in, we’re a really good team,” Raanta said. “As a goalie, it’s a dream to play behind that team.”Especially when they’re scoring goals, as they are now.