SALT LAKE CITY — The atmosphere will be charged for the first Stanley Cup Playoff game in Utah. But will that help the Utah Mammoth, the Vegas Golden Knights or both in Game 3 of the Western Conference First Round at Delta Center on Friday?<\/p>\n
The Mammoth have the momentum, coming off a 3-2 road win in Game 2 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it will be electric,\u201d Utah coach Andre Tourigny said. \u201cI think it will be a moment of pride for all of us, and when I say all of us, I mean surely the players, the coaches, but the management, the marketing team, the owner, the fans, everybody. We\u2019re all in this together, all the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NHL Board of Governors voted to establish a new franchise in Utah on April 18, 2024, with the team to acquire the Arizona Coyotes hockey assets. Several players will experience a home playoff crowd for the first time. You would expect the Mammoth to come out flying.<\/p>\n
But sometimes teams feel more pressure in front of their home crowd, and the Golden Knights are making their eighth playoff appearance in nine seasons since entering the NHL as an expansion team.<\/p>\n
Forward Reilly Smith<\/a>\u00a0and defensemen Brayden McNabb<\/a> and Shea Theodore<\/a> were part of the Golden Knights\u2019 first playoff game, with Theodore scoring the goal in a 1-0 home win against the Los Angeles Kings on April 11, 2018. (Utah defenseman Nate Schmidt<\/a> also played for Vegas in that game.)<\/p>\n They know what to expect.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019ll be very similar,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThey\u2019ll be super excited. It seems like they have a fan base that mimics what we had, and it\u2019s a cool opportunity for them to be able to showcase that.\u201d<\/p>\n McNabb said the atmosphere should be fun.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it might play to our advantage too,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting for us, too, when their crowd\u2019s going. We\u2019re used to it. We\u2019re a veteran group. We\u2019ve played in loud buildings before in playoff runs, so I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll be something similar to what we\u2019re used to.\u201d<\/p>\n Teams that have taken a 2-1 lead in a best-of-7 series have won the series 69 percent of the time (396-178) in NHL history.<\/p>\n Here are three things to watch in Game 3:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SALT LAKE CITY — The atmosphere will be charged for the first Stanley Cup Playoff game in Utah.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5,4,51,5290,232,5291,5289],"class_list":{"0":"post-560594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-hockey-club","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-utah","11":"tag-utah-hc","12":"tag-utah-hockey-club","13":"tag-utahhc","14":"tag-utahhockeyclub"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116475117191635962","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560594","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=560594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}