VGK Melt Avalanche’s Season In Four-Game Sweep, Off To Stanley Cup Final For Third Time In Franchise’s Nine-Year History
Story by Alan Snel Photos by J. Tyge O’Donnell
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — The fans’ “We want the Cup” chants began with three minutes left in the game.
And the Vegas Golden Knights will get their chance to win a second Stanley Cup championship in four seasons after VGK swept the Colorado, four games to zero, with a 2-1 win at T-Mobile Arena Tuesday
The hockey world will just have to deal with the “villain” Golden Knights back in the NHL championship round for the third time in the franchise’s nine-year period.
“We rain into a buzz saw in Vegas,” Colorado Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said at his postgame presser.
As for Vegas coach John Tortorella, the man who replaced Bruce Cassidy with a mere eight games left in the season, said in response to an LVSportsBiz.com question, “This team activated itself . . . We’re (coaches) kind of like guidance counselors.”
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VGK captain Mark Stone scored on a breakaway in the first period, showing some impressive speed, while scrappy fourth-liner Cole Smith scored in the third frame. Smith is an undrafted forward acquired by the VGK in a trade with the Nashville Predators in early March.
Colorado’s Gabriel Landeskog scored in the final minutes to make it a 2-1 game.
Vegas held on and will play either Montreal or Carolina in the final. Carolina leads Montreal, 2-1, in games in the Eastern Conference Final.
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After two periods in Game 4 of the Western Conference Final, the VGK led the team with the best regular season record, the Colorado Avalanche, 1-0, thanks to a nifty lob pass from defenseman Brayden McNabb to Stone to set up the captain’s breakaway goal on Avs goalie Mackenzie Blackwood just less than five minutes into the game.
The VGK had scored 4-2. 3-1, 5-3 wins over the Avalanche in Games 1, 2 and 3.
The Game 4 atmosphere was electric inside T-Mobile Arena, where attendance was announced at 18,188.
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Vegas held the NHL’s most explosive offense led by the NHL’s top goal scorer, Nathan MacKinnon, and star defenseman Cale Makar, to only seven goals in the four games.
The Knights displayed a fierce 200-foot checking game, while goalie Carter Hart was a vastly improved netminder from the regular season to the post-season.
“We checked our asses off,” Tortorella said at his postgame presser.
The VGK were up, 1-0, when Colorado goalie Blackwood make a series of sensational saves on a Vegas man advantage, including two beauties that thwarted Vegas sniper Pavel Dorofeyev.
“I thought that would come back to haunt us,” Tortorella said of the missed power play goal chances.
Tortorella was out of hockey when the Golden Knights came calling in March.
The man known as “Torts” said he was “very fortunate to get this opportunity.”
He has talked about how coaches get too much credit when a team wins and that he made an effort to listen to the players of his new team. Tortorella said, “coaches overcoach.”
As Torts put it, “We get in the way sometimes.”
His said his coaching approach in the playoffs was to “coach with them.”
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It took a lot of guts by General Manager Kelly McCrimmon to fire Cup-winning Bruce Cassidy with eight games left in the regular season. But Tortorella, who won a Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004, was the right choice.
McCrimmon believed VGK players were just not responding to Cassidy’s words and leadership style, so the GM inserted Tortorella behind the Golden Knights bench to light a fire under an underperforming group of players who would squeeze out 95 points to win the Pacific Division. VGK knocked out Utah and Anaheim in the first two rounds ad then Torts defeated a second Presidents’ Trophy-winning team in the playoffs — a feat never accomplished by an NHL coach.
Tortorella was 7-0-1 in his eight regular season games and is now 12-4 in 16 playoff games for a total record of 19-4-1.
Of the team he inherited from Cassidy, the Knights :know what it’s takes” to win. “It was our best game. . . .We found our way.”
Vegas became the seventh team in NHL history to sweep the No. 1 seed. And it’s the eighth team in League history to enter the Stanley Cup Final on a win streak of six or more games. The Knights won the last two games against Anaheim in Round 2 and won four straight against Colorado in the NHL’s semifinals.
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