AP
Vegas Golden Knights players watch the Montreal Canadiens celebrate following overtime in Game 6 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup semifinal playoff series Thursday, June 24, 2021 in Montreal. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press via AP)
Saturday, June 26, 2021 | 2 a.m.
After the Game 6 loss Thursday to the Montreal, Alec Martinez said this year’s Golden Knights were one of the best teams he’s ever played on. That’s particularly meaningful coming from the defenseman considering he was a part of two Stanley Cup-winning Kings’ teams.
Reilly Smith echoed Martinez’s sentiment moment later. The Golden Knights knew how good they were this season, an awareness that made winning the Cup more expectation than fantasy.
It’s also the same awareness that makes their loss so disappointing. It’s hard to make it as far as the Golden Knights did — ask the President’s Trophy-winning Avalanche or North Division-winning Maple Leafs or the loaded Hurricanes, none of whom made it out of the second round — but that’s little solace at the moment.
There will be changes in the offseason. There always are. The Golden Knights’ championship window remains open with the core of the team still in place, but when a team gets as close as Vegas has now done two years in a row, it’s hard to look too much into the future.
“We had a hell of a season, we had a good run in the playoffs, we’ve just got to find that little bit more sticking with it, all of us have to be a little bit better,” goalie Robin Lehner said. “We’re right there, yes, still to be in these situations for years to come. But every team in the league is trying to do the same thing. It sucks right now.”
The Golden Knights should be pretty good next year, too. Almost everyone from this year’s team is under contract for 2021-22, with only Martinez, Mattias Janmark and Tomas Nosek eligible for free agency. There may be a trade or two and they must figure out how and if they’ll re-sign Martinez, specifically, but Vegas will bring back a similar team.
A promise at another chance doesn’t make the loss sting any less. Mark Stone, the captain who went scoreless in the series, bore much of the responsibility and was emotional after the loss, but Martinez at times struggled to find the words in his postgame press conference, too. William Karlsson wore his Golden Knights ballcap low over his face and seemed to snap back to reality only when asked a question.
There were so many “what-ifs” left lingering. What if Marc-Andre Fleury doesn’t kick a puck in Game 3 and allow Montreal to tie it and win in overtime? Or what if the offense arrived before the third period of Game 2? Or Stone merely slumped instead of disappeared? Or if the power play had even one goal? Or if Max Pacioretty’s Grade-A chance in overtime of Game 6 went in and we were talking about Game 7 tonight?
There are a lot of things that could have swung the series with Montreal that didn’t. It’s up to management and the coaching staff to figure out how to fix those things, then up to the players to execute on them once the puck drops on the Golden Knights’ fifth campaign.
“It comes down to moments,” coach Pete DeBoer said. “It’s moments that you’ve got to seize.”
Some changes, from a schematic and/or personnel perspective, need to be made. Vegas was an atrocious 0-for-15 on the power play against Montreal and didn’t impress anyone with a 14.3% rate in the first two rounds either.
For the second straight year, a defensive-minded, lower-seeded team eliminated a Vegas squad that had no trouble scoring in the regular season.
“We’ve got to look at everything,” DeBoer said. “We’ve got to look at what we can do differently from a coaching perspective, we’ve got to look at our personnel. I think everything’s on the table.”
Since the Golden Knights’ inception in 2017-18, the Tampa Bay Lightning are the only other franchise to reach the semifinal round three times. The Lightning are considered the league’s premier organization now, but it wasn’t that long ago that they struggled to win in the playoffs too.
They lost in the Stanley Cup Final in 2015 then dealt with annual disappointment including an embarrassing first-round sweep to the Columbus Blue Jackets as the league’s top team in 2019. They came back from the devastating loss to break through in 2020 and win a championship.
Winning a Stanley Cup is incredibly difficult. It took the Lightning’s current core years for everything to click, and the history is similar with so many teams before them.
The Golden Knights might never win the Stanley Cup with their current group — just ask a Canucks fan from a decade ago how things can go so wrong after being so close — but if they do, they’ll have this season to look back on.
