{"id":634132,"date":"2026-07-30T19:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/634132\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T19:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:03:13","slug":"vgk-must-take-lesson-in-postseason-that-produced-some-of-the-most-fun-ive-ever-had","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/634132\/","title":{"rendered":"VGK Must Take Lesson In Postseason That Produced “Some Of The Most Fun I\u2019ve Ever Had”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> (Photo Credit: SinBin.vegas Photographer Brandon Andreasen)<\/p>\n

The 2025-26 regular season was the most taxing the Golden Knights have ever gone through. The schedule itself was crammed into a tighter space than ever before because of the Olympics. Then the way the season actually went, with ups and downs, trades, injuries, the coach firing, off-ice storylines, and probably 10 other things I\u2019m forgetting, it was exhausting to follow along, let alone play through.<\/p>\n

Watching night in and night out, it was easy to see and feel. It was a grind from Opening Night all the way to Game 82. Then, the real season began, and everything changed for a team that looked beaten up physically and beaten down mentally.<\/p>\n

The Golden Knights went from a team that lost more games than it won to the juggernaut many expected when the season began. Obviously, it\u2019s a chicken-and-egg situation, but they started to have fun again. Once they got through the Utah series, you could feel a shift in the energy of the team, and there was genuine joy back in the locker room for the first time in a while.<\/p>\n

Fast forward through the end of the postseason, albeit coming up two wins short, and just about every player said they\u2019d remember the run fondly when they have a chance to look back.<\/p>\n

The past two months was some of the most fun I\u2019ve ever had. I would kill to have gotten two more wins with the guys but still it was so much fun and went through so many things. It\u2019s a season I will remember for a long time but hopefully there are even more exciting ones coming. -Tomas Hertl<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a great power in enjoying the game, and the Golden Knights need to find a way to harness what happened in May and June and learn from what occurred from October to April.<\/p>\n

The team that ripped through three rounds of the playoffs was loose. They enjoyed the gauntlet of the playoffs in a way they clearly did not during the 82-game regular season.<\/p>\n

Now, as they head into the first 84-game season in franchise history, they must find ways to keep the fun alive. There are going to be massive swings of emotion between the first game on September 29th and the start of the playoffs nearly seven months later. To succeed and reach the summit they came so close to last year, fun has to be a constant theme.<\/p>\n

The grind is inevitable; the misery that came with it in 25-26 doesn\u2019t have to be. When they didn\u2019t embrace enjoying the game, the Golden Knights looked as average as can be, but when they did, they were the best team in the league. That\u2019s an important lesson that must stick with them as they embark on Season 10.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Photo Credit: SinBin.vegas Photographer Brandon Andreasen) The 2025-26 regular season was the most taxing the Golden Knights have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5129],"tags":[149,5317,5,4,1261,74,39,5316],"class_list":["post-634132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vegas-golden-knights","tag-golden-knights","tag-goldenknights","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-tomas-hertl","tag-vegas","tag-vegas-golden-knights","tag-vegasgoldenknights"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/117010484940449820","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634132","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=634132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}