The Vegas Golden Knights clinched a Stanley Cup playoff berth for the eighth time in their nine years of existence with a 3-2 overtime win over Colorado on Saturday. But don\u2019t look for John Tortorella\u2019s team to take the foot off the pedal in their final two regular-season contests.<\/p>\n
Vegas (37-26-17, 91 points), which hosts the Winnipeg Jets (35-32-12, 82 points) on Monday night in Las Vegas, is still in a very tight three-way battle for first place in the Pacific Division with the Edmonton Oilers and Anaheim Ducks.<\/p>\n
The results in the final two games against the Jets and Wednesday against Seattle will play a key role in winning a possible division title and securing home ice for the first round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking to keep going here,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cHappy that they can say they\u2019re in, but there\u2019s other things to do here in the next couple games \u2026 I won\u2019t lie. Nice to say we\u2019re in right now. Now we go back and try to find a way in our division.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the future looks a lot brighter for the Golden Knights than it did on March 29 when Tortorella replaced Bruce Cassidy behind the bench. Vegas had won just three of its previous 12 games (3-7-2) and looked lethargic doing it.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s changed under Tortorella. The Golden Knights have gone 5-0-1 since the coaching change and claimed seven of a possible eight points on a challenging four-game road trip that began with a 5-1 win at Edmonton and concluded with the overtime win over the Avalanche.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been fantastic,\u201d Jack Eichel, who scored the OT winner, said of Tortorella. \u201cHe brings a ton of energy. He gets us ready to play every night. His enthusiasm, his emotion in the locker room when he\u2019s delivering messages, you can feel it. I think it\u2019s given us a spark.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winnipeg comes into the contest with its playoff hopes on life support following an ugly 7-1 home loss to Philadelphia on Saturday. The Jets are five points below the playoff line with just three games (and a maximum of six points) remaining.<\/p>\n
Winnipeg fell behind 3-1 in the first nine minutes against the Flyers and trailed 5-1 after two periods in what was considered a must-win game going in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of those ones, whether we lost 7-1 or 3-2, those are critical points,\u201d Jets captain Adam Lowry said. \u201cNow we know the situation we\u2019re in. We pretty much have to pick up every point the rest of the way and hopefully, we can get some help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winnipeg also plays at Utah on Tuesday and finishes the season at home against San Jose on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know how tight it is and in the situation we\u2019re in, we need points desperately,\u201d defenseman Josh Morrissey said. \u201cNo one wants to lose like that. It\u2019s embarrassing in our own arena. At the same time, what are we going to do, cry about it? We\u2019ve got three games left. The score hurts right now as we drive home, but we\u2019ve got to turn the page and keep pushing like we have been.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vegas Golden Knights clinched a Stanley Cup playoff berth for the eighth time in their nine years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5121],"tags":[5,78,4,77,18,5288],"class_list":{"0":"post-551492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-winnipeg-jets","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-jets","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-winnipeg","12":"tag-winnipeg-jets","13":"tag-winnipegjets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116395228334334847","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}