SALT LAKE CITY (AP) \u2014 John Tortorella and the Vegas Golden Knights are off to the second round after pushing aside the pesky Utah Mammoth.<\/p>\n
Vegas ground out three straight victories to finish off the Mammoth, winning 5-1 on Friday night in Game 6 after consecutive overtime wins. Vegas overcame third-period deficits in its first three victories.<\/p>\n
After Tortorella took over as coach from the fired Bruce Cassidy, the Golden Knights closed the regular season 7-0-1. They went from a team struggling to stay in the playoff picture to winning a division title for the fifth time in nine seasons.<\/p>\n
Depth, confidence, and experience helped Vegas make winning plays to close out tight games as the series progressed.<\/p>\n
Mitch Marner and fellow forward Brett Howden specifically answered the bell with big plays. Howden had four goals in the series, and Marner had two goals and five assists.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you roll four lines, it doesn\u2019t matter too much about where the faceoff is,\u201d Golden Knights captain Mark Stone said. \u201cYou can just kind of put whoever out on the ice. But it\u2019s always a new team every year. You always find out who you are in the first round.\u201d<\/p>\n
Utah\u2019s speed forced the Golden Knights to get creative, and offered good preparation for what Vegas can expect to face in a second-round series against the Anaheim Ducks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a team that came at you with a lot of speed and skill,\u201d Marner said. \u201cThey made us work throughout that neutral zone to really try and slow them down and shut down some of their offense.\u201d<\/p>\n
In particular, the Golden Knights excelled at denying Utah on the power play. The Mammoth went just 1 of 16 on the man advantage int he series.<\/p>\n
Howden had two short-handed goals, the second in OT in Game 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohnny Stevens, our coach who runs that, had a really good game plan for them,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cBlocked some shots. Carter (Hart) made some key saves all through this series. (Utah) gained momentum off of it, but we stayed with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SALT LAKE CITY (AP) \u2014 John Tortorella and the Vegas Golden Knights are off to the second round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[1741,762,63495,5,348,63496,1326,1040,533,3494,3492,60785,48059,10868,60796,51],"class_list":["post-564983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hockey","tag-brett-howden","tag-bruce-cassidy","tag-golden-knights-nhl-stanley-cup-playoffs","tag-hockey","tag-john-tortorella","tag-johnny-stevens","tag-las-vegas","tag-mark-stone","tag-mitch-marner","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-40776-ap-california-sports-only","tag-product-40798-ap-nevada-sports-only","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-product-40816-ap-utah-sports-only","tag-utah"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116504793173471212","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564983","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=564983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}