Photo Credit: Ken Boehlke, SinBin.vegas

The margin for error is gone. One more bad game, one more bad period, maybe even one more bad shift, and the season is lost. The Golden Knights are facing a 3-1 series hole for the third time in franchise history, and tonight they’ll look to extend it, something they failed to do in the first two tries (2018 WSH, 2020 DAL).

To do it, it will take a group effort better than anything Vegas has put forth all series to this point. The top-six will have to be on top of their game to continue limiting the damage done by Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, the defense must improve deep in the zone and in front of their own goal, and Adin Hill will have to have his best game of the postseason.

More importantly, though, the Golden Knights need their leading goal scorers to start scoring some goals.

I think there are some players in this series offensively that… you know some times it’s a short sample size but we’re into Game 5, guys that haven’t put up points that scored a lot of goals, it’s time. It’s time. -Bruce Cassidy

VGK’s two 30-goal scorers from the regular season are both still looking for their first points, let alone goals, in the series.

Pavel missed time. Olofsson is kind of into the series, Pavel needs to get going. Usually scorers need scoring touches so the plan (of putting him on the top PP unit) was to try and get him going. We need him to get going. He’s only played two games and he’s a young guy. There are some older guys there that need to pull him along. -Cassidy

Jack Eichel, Ivan Barbashev, and Brett Howden, each of whom scored 20+ in the regular season are all goalless against Edmonton, and Barbashev and Howden remain pointless as well.

That’s part of getting our offense going, the guys you’ve relied on all year to produce need to produce. -Cassidy

The Golden Knights have scored just 10 goals in four games against an Edmonton team that allowed 24 in six games to Los Angeles in the First Round and 2.87 per game in the regular season.

You get down 3-1, there’s no magic potion you can go and sprinkle around in the room. We’re too far along as a team. There’s a lot of guys in that room that won, they understand what’s at stake. We’ve got to play better. We’ve just got to play harder and play better for longer and that’s what’s in front of us. That’s a little bit of will right now. Do they want to do it and play on or not? We’re going to find out pretty quickly. -Cassidy

The locker room with 17 Stanley Cup champions in it has to dig deeper than they ever had to on the run to those Cups. Time has run out. It’s now or never.