Following a topsy-turvy season that saw them fire their head coach with just eight games left in the regular-season, the Vegas Golden Knights appear to be peaking at just the right time.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights (39-26-17, 95 points) sprinted to a 10-game point streak down the stretch to claim their fifth Pacific Division title in nine seasons and will host the Utah Mammoth in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs beginning Sunday night in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Vegas didn\u2019t clinch the Pacific Division until it defeated Seattle, 4-1, in its regular-season finale. The Golden Knights, who won the 2023 Stanley Cup under Bruce Cassidy, captured 15 of a possible 16 points (7-0-1) down the stretch under the guidance of John Tortorella, who replaced Cassidy as head coach on March 29.<\/p>\n
Before the coaching change, Vegas had won just five times (5-10-2) since the Olympic break and saw a four-point first-place lead disappear, falling to just four points above the Western Conference playoff bubble.<\/p>\n
\u201cKind of a weird year for sure, especially in the Pacific,\u201d defenseman Brayden McNabb said. \u201cA lot of ups and downs. We were on top there for a while, and then we were in third flirting with the wild card. And then we found our game at the right time and were able to win the division. That\u2019s what we wanted to do and we did it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barely. Edmonton, which finished in second place with 93 points, lost four of its last six games (2-2-2), including a 5-1 home loss to the Golden Knights, while Anaheim, which finished third three points behind Vegas with 92 points, lost eight of its final 10 games (2-6-2).<\/p>\n
Tortorella, who guided Tampa Bay to the 2004 Stanley Cup title, is credited with rebuilding confidence in a more relaxed locker room that appeared to have tuned out Cassidy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I know is that since I\u2019ve been here, they have played at a level and played as a team, consistently,\u201d Tortorella said.<\/p>\n
Utah (43-33-6, 92 points) finished fourth in the rugged Central Division but captured the top Western Conference wild-card spot, the franchise\u2019s first playoff berth since moving from Arizona to Salt Lake City two years ago. Prior to that, the then-Arizona Coyotes last made the playoffs in 2020, losing in five games in the first round to Colorado.<\/p>\n
Mammoth defenseman Nate Schmidt was a member of the inaugural \u201cGolden Misfits\u201d Vegas team in 2017-18 that went all the way to the Stanley Cup final before losing in five games to Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals. He believes Utah, which won two of the three regular-season meetings with the Golden Knights, has the potential to do well in its first playoff series.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the idea that our guys are quick, they\u2019re fast, they\u2019re in this time of year for the first time,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cThe youthfulness is going to be something I\u2019m excited to see. When we put pressure on teams and continue to roll over them and roll onto them, get our puck in and kind of let our speed kind of dictate the pace and how we want to play, it makes it really hard to play against us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did our job getting there, and now it\u2019s on to the next milestone here \u2014 getting some wins, getting some experience, and doing what we came here to do,\u201d forward Michael Carcone said.<\/p>\n
Tortorella said he\u2019s excited to see how his new team responds to the challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the most exciting time because everybody\u2019s playing at a different level, and it\u2019s a good test to see how high you can get as a team,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cEverything is going to be amped up. As each game goes by in the series, it\u2019s going to be harder and harder. So it\u2019s a great challenge for the players.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following a topsy-turvy season that saw them fire their head coach with just eight games left in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5114],"tags":[191,5,4,190,109,5222],"class_list":{"0":"post-555692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-capitals","8":"tag-capitals","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-washington","12":"tag-washington-capitals","13":"tag-washingtoncapitals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116428836139706473","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555692","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=555692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}