The sun hasn’t yet set on the season for the Vegas Golden Knights, but it’s getting to be very late in the afternoon.
The Golden Knights are no strangers to adversity. In the regular season, they survived nine different stretches of three or more losses, a bottom-five goaltending rotation, and long-term injuries to key players. Ultimately, this added up to a year full of underachievement, and, in a desperate attempt to break through, one of the more memorable Hail Marys in the history of the National Hockey League.
With just eight games remaining in the regular season, the Golden Knights made a coaching change. Despite being in a playoff position, they relieved Bruce Cassidy of his duties as head coach and brought in John Tortorella.
There were a million ways this late-season coaching change could have gone wrong, and a million reasons that it should have. But it didn’t.
With Tortorella behind the bench, the Golden Knights ended the regular season on a 7-0-1 run. In Round 1, they battled through close calls against the Utah Mammoth and came out victorious. In Round 2, they dispatched the Anaheim Ducks in six games, which were so unremarkable that the biggest bit of news was that they lost a second-round draft pick for refusing to speak with the media after their Game 6 win. And in the Western Conference Final, the Golden Knights shocked the world and swept the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche.
But now, down 3-2 to the Carolina Hurricanes in the Stanley Cup Final, the Golden Knights face their biggest challenge yet.
John Tortorella isn’t concerned about the predicament his team is in. Following Thursday’s Game 5 loss, he took the stand and vowed that his team would return to Raleigh for Game 7.
“We’ll be back here,” he swore. “We’re just gonna do it in a different order… I’m gonna leave my clothes here, that’s for sure. They’ll be at the hotel.”
A Mark Messier guarantee for a Game 6 victory wasn’t the only promise Tortorella made on Thursday night. Mere moments later, he backed goaltender Carter Hart, who entered the series with a .924 save percentage but is now setting records for all the wrong reasons.
In Game 4, Hart became the first goaltender to allow 4+ goals through the first four games of the Stanley Cup Final; last night, he extended that to five straight. Hart’s average save percentage in this series is .856, and for the first time since April, he has lost two games in a row.
It is also worth noting that Hart hasn’t been made available to the media following any of the five Stanley Cup Final games. Despite being the starting goaltender, he hasn’t spoken since a hastily relocated availability during media day that ended very abruptly.
And yet, there is no question that Hart will start Game 6 on Sunday.
When asked if he considered going to Adin Hill in the third period of Game 5, Tortorella scoffed, “Oh, for– Christ, that could be the stupidest question I heard.”
Tortorella has made his decision, and time will tell if it was the right one. On Sunday night, the Golden Knights will either be one win away from the Stanley Cup or headed towards locker cleanout day.
Golf legend Walter Hagen used to say, “No one remembers who came in second,” and that’s where the Golden Knights stand right now. Win, and they force a Game 7 back in Raleigh for all the marbles. Win, and they get one step closer to etching their names in history as well as on Lord Stanley’s Cup. Lose, and they risk being forgotten.
It all comes down to Sunday.
