The Golden Knights made the playoffs for the eighth time in nine seasons since joining the NHL as an expansion team in 2017-18.<\/p>\n
They have won 62 games and 12 series in the playoffs, one behind the Tampa Bay Lightning for most in the NHL in each category since 2018. They won the Cup in 2023, made the Cup Final in 2018 and advanced as far as the third round in 2020 and 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we have high expectations, and we try to live that every day,\u201d forward Reilly Smith<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cI think through the organization, the players, everyone tries to live up to that level every day you\u2019re at the rink. We don\u2019t accept losing, and I think the last couple weeks is a good testament to that.\u201d<\/p>\n Vegas replaced Bruce Cassidy, the Cup-winning coach in 2023, with John Tortorella on March 29, when they were in an 8-15-4 funk and had slipped from first to third in the Pacific Division. They finished the regular season on a 7-0-1 run and won the Pacific.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of great players, and when we\u2019re playing together as five in all three zones, we\u2019re a tough team to beat,\u201d defenseman Brayden McNabb<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cIt kind of showed the last few games, so it was great for the confidence. We\u2019ve got a belief in here now, and that\u2019s a huge thing. That\u2019s the No. 1 thing you\u2019ve got to have. So, anything can happen in the playoffs. It\u2019s the best time of year, fun time of year for us, so we\u2019re excited to get going.\u201d<\/p>\n Game breakers<\/p>\n Mammoth: Clayton Keller<\/a> led Utah with 88 points (26 goals, 62 assists) in 82 games. Schmaltz had 74 points (33 goals, 41 assists) in 82 games, and Dylan Guenther<\/a>\u00a0had 73 points (40 goals, 33 assists) in 79 games, leading the Mammoth in goals. Logan Cooley had 43 points (24 goals, 19 assists) in 54 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Golden Knights made the playoffs for the eighth time in nine seasons since joining the NHL as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5129],"tags":[149,5317,5,4,74,39,5316],"class_list":{"0":"post-554929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vegas-golden-knights","8":"tag-golden-knights","9":"tag-goldenknights","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-vegas","13":"tag-vegas-golden-knights","14":"tag-vegasgoldenknights"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116423055385611878","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554929","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=554929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}