ANAHEIM, Calif. — Listening to Vegas’ veteran players speak after Sunday night’s 4-3 loss to the Ducks at the Honda Center, it sounded like the Golden Knights had just experienced something relatively inconsequential.
Perhaps a friendly game of cards, or a mundane regular-season game in mid-November.
Based on their demeanor and answers, it was almost hard to believe that they had just dropped an emotion-packed Game 4 of a second-round playoff series, and now face a best-of-three, potentially without their captain and emotional leader.
No team in the NHL has played in, or won, more playoff games than the Golden Knights since they entered the league in 2017. At this point, the breakneck nature and emotional swings of the postseason are old hat for this group.
It may seem counterintuitive, or even detrimental, to lack that sense of desperation, but it could also be why the Golden Knights consistently seem to outperform their opposition as a series deepens.
They are unfazed, as is their coach.
“I have zero worry about this team, as far as how we’re going to go about the next few games here, wherever it goes,” coach John Tortorella said. “I have total trust.”
Over the last three seasons, the Golden Knights have gone an impressive 10-4 in games 5, 6 and 7 of playoff series. They’ve outscored their opponents 51-28 in those contests.
When the tension goes up, Vegas thrives.
“That’s what you want to do,” said veteran defenseman Brayden McNabb, who has suited up for several of those games. “You want to get better, and we have. It’s a best-of-three, and we’re going home for Game 5. That’s all we’re thinking about is Game 5, and trying to get a win there.”
Sunday night in Anaheim, the Golden Knights looked a bit listless. They were limited to just 28 shot attempts, their fewest in any game this postseason or in any playoff game over the last three years. Vegas also set new playoff lows in scoring chances, high-danger chances and expected goals created at five-on-five.
A performance like that, after losing Mark Stone to injury in Game 3, could set alarm bells off for some teams, but not this one.
“We did have some good looks,” Colton Sissons said. “We always want more, and I don’t think we had a ton tonight, but we had enough really good looks to put up some goals and they just didn’t go.”
The Golden Knights have plenty of experience to lean on in situations like this. As recently as their first-round series against the Utah Mammoth, they found another gear once the series moved beyond Game 4. Early in that series, the Mammoth had stretches in which they looked like the faster, more skilled team. Yet as each game passed, Vegas leaned on them more, and eventually eliminated them in a suffocating 5-1 win in Game 6.
Anaheim has certainly looked like a more formidable opponent, but Golden Knights players know they’ve been here and done this before.
“You move on, no matter what the score was,” McNabb said. “It can be 6-0, 1-0, whatever it may be. 4-3. It’s a best-of-three now, with home ice. So we will get our rest and get ready for the next one.”
The biggest difference is Stone’s absence, and it’s a major one. The Golden Knights have simply not played well without their captain. Last season, they were eliminated without him in the lineup. Sunday night, they fell to 0-2 in playoff games without Stone.
“Stone is a big part of our team,” Tortorella said. “We miss him period, as far as his presence and as far as his play.”
Sissons agreed, but still finished his answer with a bit of bravado.
“It’s always tough losing your captain,” he said. “We’re all just going to have to step up. That’s what good teams do. Obviously, we miss Stone, but we have a lot of good leaders.”
If the Golden Knights are to continue their history of taking control of a series late, they will need those other leaders to perform at their best, and that starts with Jack Eichel. He hasn’t had a poor postseason: He’s currently tied for third in the league, behind teammate Mitch Marner and Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov, with 13 points. But that total includes only one goal, and he hasn’t been the puck dominator Vegas is used to. Now, without Stone on his wing, Eichel will need to reach another level to make the top line a force. It certainly wasn’t that on Sunday.
Vegas also needs more from Tomáš Hertl, who finally snapped his 29-game goalless drought in the final minutes of Game 4. He had one of his strongest efforts, nearly scoring on another chance when he backhanded the puck out of mid-air but put it just wide of the net. But his line was still outplayed at five-on-five.
“I think they gave us some good minutes,” Tortorella said of Hertl’s line. “The big guy there is Tommy. He’s seeing all of the power play time. He’s a good faceoff guy. He’s the one that I think needs to kick in here, and hopefully him scoring a goal there is going to help him. We’ll see.”
The Golden Knights could also use a boost from their skilled defensive pair of Noah Hanifin and Rasmus Andersson. Hanifin has yet to record a point in this series, and Andersson has only one assist in 10 playoff games.
Carter Hart wasn’t as sharp in net for Vegas as he’d been in the first three games of the series. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
Finally, Vegas will need better from Carter Hart in net to truly take control. He was arguably the best player through the first three games of the series, stopping 89 of 94 shots for a .947 save percentage. In Game 4, he let a few shots sneak underneath his arms that he’d like to have back.
It will likely take a little bit of everything. The Golden Knights gave Anaheim their best shot on Sunday in terms of physicality, and the young Ducks squad took the punch in stride.
“It was playoff hockey, and it was a man’s game,” Anaheim coach Joel Quenneville said after. “That’s basically how we saw it.”
Through four games, the Ducks have out-skated, outshot and out-chanced the Golden Knights. It’s time for Vegas to prove what it has in the past: it gets better as the series goes on.
The players seem confident that they will.
“I think just the stakes get higher, and people raise the level of their game,” Sissons said. “Guys have a lot of experience in this locker room, going deep into series, and we’ll lean on that again.”
