Golden Knights defenseman Nicolas Hague received the news Tuesday shortly after he finished his pre-game meal before the Blackhawks’ game.
“They basically said they’re going to leave me in Chicago,” Hague said Wednesday after the Wolves’ 3-2 win over the Texas Stars.
Hague — who, at 20, is one of the Golden Knights brightest defensive prospects — played all of last season with the Wolves, recording 13 goals and 19 assists and finishing plus-31. But this season, he broke camp with the Golden Knights and made his NHL debut Oct. 4.
After being a healthy scratch for three consecutive games, the move to reassign Hague to the Wolves made sense. He wasn’t playing and the Golden Knights wanted him to get some ice time. He sat in the stands and watched his team beat the Hawks 2-1 in a shootout before taking a ride to Rosemont.
Despite the short turnaround, Hague played for the Wolves on Wednesday morning.
“I don’t want to say it’s nice to be here,” Hague said. “But it’s nice to see the guys and nice to get a win today.”
But Hague’s brief reunion with his AHL team came to an end just hours after the game as the Golden Knights recalled him.
And Hague didn’t go alone. The Golden Knights also recalled goalie Garret Sparks, who had his best outing of the season Wednesday, and assigned netminder Oscar Dansk to the Wolves.
While Hague was fairly quiet in his return to Allstar Arena, Sparks made several huge saves — especially in the third — to help the Wolves win. In total, he stopped 39 of 41 shots.
“It was unreal,” Hague said of Sparks, who’s 2-2-1 this season and owns a 2.15 goals-against average and a 0.936 save percentage. “He was a rock back there. We were saying in the third, we didn’t want to sit back, we wanted to tighten up defensively, wanted to clear the front of the net but we know if he sees the puck, the ones he saw today, he was going to stop, so it’s a confidence builder having him back there.”
The Wolves played shoddy defense and as a result were outshot 41-24 (and no, that’s not a typo).
“We gave them the shots, the chances off the wall, we didn’t get them out and when you play fast-skilled teams they make you pay,” said center Gage Quinney, who scored two goals. “Luckily this morning Sparksy was on.”
Seven games into the season, coach Rocky Thompson called the season a “work in progress” especially on defense.
“We’re a young team,” he said. “Defense is one of the last skills that you learn. ... We’ve been cognizant of it and we’ve been working a lot on fundamental stuff and a lot of one-on-one stuff.”
Despite their mistakes, Thompson thought Wednesday game showed promise.
“What I liked about our third even though we were making miss plays with the puck ... we were on the right side of it and we weren’t given up a ton of Grade A opportunities from in the house, from in front of the net come third period, so that’s good,” he said.
