The Vegas Golden Knights are currently 24-14-10-0, putting them at a 58% win rate. For an NHL team wanting to make the playoffs, this rate needs to be higher, and the team needs to be winning consistently. To put it into perspective, the Florida Panthers are currently first in the league and have a 24-17-4-3 record, This puts them at a 71% win rate, which is 13% higher than the Knights. On October 22, the Vegas Golden Knights lost 5-3 to the Edmonton Oilers, and I had a chance to ask head coach Pete DeBoer what his plans are for keeping team morale up during losing streaks.

“You know, when we come in we try and keep it consistent as a group and, you know, in an NHL season the highs can’t be too high and the lows can’t be too low and it’s way too early for the lows to have a dramatic effect on our group. So, we have to come in tomorrow and take a look at the things we did better. I think, you know, we took a step. Our game took a step tonight closer to being able to win consistently and that’s when a win streak starts when you get that foundation in place, and it hasn’t been in place, but I thought we took a little bit of a step tonight.”

Coach Deboer is obviously aware of the effect that losing is having on the team; however, based on DeBoer’s responses, he doesn’t seem to have any kind of strategy to improve the morale of the team. This is not an uncommon problem, and many teams in the NHL and even youth hockey teams here in Vegas face this problem. I asked Orell Sellouk, a 12th-grade band major who plays amateur hockey, what he does to win after losing a couple of games.

“You know, I just think about it as a team effort kind of thing. You know, like at the end of the day, you know, we just got to work better as a team and find out the ways to win and you know, like, stuff that we did bad in the game, stuff we did wrong. Our coach talks about it every time we have a loss. So it’s just about teamwork at the end of the day.”