Tomas Hertl Reveals Fix For Golden Knights' Overtime Flaw

The Vegas Golden Knights have all the pieces of a contender: talent, depth, and experience. Yet despite their firepower, one nagging issue keeps derailing their momentum — overtime struggles. In a Western Conference loaded with elite teams, including three of the NHL’s top four — the league-leading Colorado Avalanche, the relentless Dallas Stars and the quickly rising Anaheim Ducks — every point counts, and the Knights’ inability to close games in extra time has left them chasing rather than leading.

The Golden Knights are talented enough to beat anyone, but for all their strengths, one flaw continues to haunt their season: overtime. Vegas currently sits fourth in the Pacific despite being more than capable of outplaying the three teams above them.

Sure, they’re missing two of their top, most experienced players in Mark Stone and Alex Pietrangelo, but the Knights haven’t played like a wounded team. They’ve played like a good one with one glaring weakness.

Historic Amount of NHL Games Going to Overtime

This year’s league-wide chaos in overtime has only made the issue louder. Over a quarter of NHL games have gone pas regulation so far this season, putting the league on pace to break its all-time record. While other teams have turned that chaos into opportunity, Vegas has done the opposite.

They’ve dropped six straight in overtime and haven’t won one since their second game of the season, a 4–3 victory over San Jose that required a bizarre misplay from Alex Nedeljkovic to hand them the win.

28.4% of all NHL games this season have gone past regulation.

The current record for a campaign is 25% in 2013-14
— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) November 15, 2025

Why the Golden Knights Can’t Win in Overtime

The losses sting even more when you look at who they came against. Four of their overtime losees on the season have been against Western conference teams, and three of those are against teams in their division. In the month of November, they had two 4–3 overtime losses to the Anaheim Ducks. Anaheim currently sits only two points ahead of Vegas. Flip those results, and suddenly the Golden Knights are the ones sitting atop the Pacific Division.

After the second straight overtime loss to the Ducks, Tomas Hertl shared his thoughts on what went wrong for the Knights. When asked what Anaheim did to make overtime difficult, he pointed to the most basic element of 3-on-3 hockey.

“They mostly had the puck because they made some good changes,” Hertl said. “We couldn’t change, we maybe forced the puck, didn’t hold enough. In overtime, if it’s not a big chance, we should hold it, let them down, make a couple changes, make them tired. We have to be smarter because we’re losing points in overtime.”

Head coach Bruce Cassidy echoed the frustration, calling puck management the team’s biggest problem, something he’s repeated more than once this year.

Hertl’s Simple Fix for Vegas’ Extra-Time Woes

Hertl recently made Vegas franchise history becoming the third fastest Golden Knight to reach 40 goals with the team, doing so in 94 games. As one of their top scorers, when he's playing well so does the rest of the team. During this interview he was also asked what fixes he’d like to see, Hertl kept the message simple.

Tomas Hertl made some VGK history last night 🤩🐢#VegasBorn pic.twitter.com/TSh9C6Lpz2
— Vegas Golden Knights (@GoldenKnights) November 11, 2025

“Just hold the puck more, don’t force things if they're not there. Hold it in the o-zone, get out, maybe make a couple changes, get them tired. When we start with the puck, we just maybe can force things right away, maybe change a couple times to get them tired and wait for the opening.”

The blueprint is there. The awareness is there. The urgency is growing by the day. And with the Western Conference stacked with elite contenders, Vegas doesn’t have the luxury of letting free points slip away in overtime anymore. They’re good enough to climb to the top, but if they want to stay with the giants of the West, they need to find a way to start finishing tight games.

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