Marc Andre Fleury, who has been the rock in nets for the Knights during the first two rounds of the playoffs, had three friends join him tonight in eliminating the San Jose Sharks in Game 6 by a score of 3-0. For Fleury, it was yet another series-clinching shutout victory, his fourth in just 10 games.
Marc Andre’s three friends last night won’t be found anywhere on the official game summary, but they were on the ice for the entire 60 minutes of the game. They were Left Post, Right Post, and Crossbar. They, along with Fleury, are the main reason that Vegas is now one of only four teams left that will compete for the Stanley Cup. Thirty-one teams started in October. After 82 games, that number dwindled to 16 teams. After Round 1, 16 teams became 8 teams. And now, Vegas and Tampa Bay, the co-favorites to win the Cup, are two of the remaining four.
Vegas and Tampa Bay both advanced from Round 2 yesterday; they now wait to see who they’ll face in their respective Conference Finals.
Both Pittsburgh and Washington, and Nashville and Winnipeg, will play their sixth games tonight. The Washington Capitals and Winnipeg Jets both lead their series 3-2. The winner of the Nashville-Winnipeg series will be the Conference matchup for Vegas. I believe Vegas matches up better versus Nashville than they do against Winnipeg, but no matter whom they face, it will be their toughest challenge so far. As close as the thought of playing for the Stanley Cup seems, there’s still a lot of hockey to go before then.
Don’t get me wrong. Not one VGK fan could have even had this on their radar in October. The initial hope was for a competitive team; the dream was to at least compete for a playoff position. Accomplishing that alone was so farfetched that in our hearts, we knew we were reaching for the stars.
Who could have possibly imagined that this group of castoffs, who have named themselves the “Golden Misfits,” would come together as a team that looks like they’ve been playing together for years? Who could have foreseen that, in the process, they’ve galvanized this entire city. The city feeds off the team and the team feeds off the city and the combined energy absolutely shakes the foundation of T-Mobile every game.
In Game 5 on Friday night, Coach Gallant inserted three new skaters into the lineup. Last night, he added only one new player, but it once again seemed to be the perfect addition to the 20-man lineup. With William Carrier suffering an undisclosed injury in Game 5, Gallant faced the “next man up” situation with at least three choices.
The obvious one was to put Tomas Nosek back on the fourth line and hope sitting him down for the lackluster fore-check in Game 4 would be a wakeup call. The other choice was to put Tomas Tatar back in, but that would probably have meant juggling the line combinations that seemed to gel in Game 5. Coach’s last choice— and one that seemed not to be a fan favorite—was putting in Ryan Reaves.
Reaves has never been fully accepted by the VGK fan base. I personally disagree with their opinion, as Reaves fills what might have been the team’s only hole: a player who could not only add a solid fore-check, but also be a threatening presence on the ice to prevent opposing teams from taking liberties with skilled players. He performed that task for the St. Louis Blues and when Pittsburgh needed some protection for their star player Sidney Crosby, they went out and traded for him. When Pittsburgh wanted to obtain Derick Brassard for added offense for their playoff run, they needed some cap relief to add him to the lineup. VGK had plenty of cap space available and the deal was worked out for Vegas to assume a portion of Brassard’s salary and obtain Reaves as consideration for doing so. To me, it was a smart move by GM George McPhee, who added some grit the team lacked without screwing with the chemistry.
The VGK fans and some of the media didn’t agree with McPhee on this.
Last night, Reaves was inserted into the lineup for the exact reason he was obtained. The fore-checking line of Carpenter and Bellemare needed a replacement on the right wing for the injured Carrier and if you didn’t notice, in the first five games of this series, the Sharks were extra physical with some of the VGK players.
Last night, this line played and set the tone for the fore-check that, for all intents and purposes, shut down San Jose for the final 40 minutes of the game. Fleury and his three friends took care of the first 20 minutes, when San Jose controlled the game. Those four stonewalled San Jose, who had 31 attempted shots on Fleury, while Vegas attempted only had 19 shots at Martin Jones. Actual shots were 11 on Fleury in the first period, while Jones faced 12.
In the second period, the Vegas fore-check took over the game, allowing only seven shots shots on Fleury. With everything to lose for San Jose, you’d have expected that Fleury would be severely tested by pucks to the net. But the Sharks could get off only 10 shots. They were smothered by the entire team playing all 200 feet of the ice, and especially the line of Carpenter, Bellemare, Reaves.
I haven’t seen Reaves play a lot of his 498 NHL career games or any of his 36 career playoff games, but the talking heads on NBC Sports Network and the NHL Network were saying this was the best they’d ever seen him play.
Between McPhee and Gallant, who are runaway favorites for Coach and GM of the year, in my opinion, their decisions from June 2017 to today have been almost flawless. Especially Gallant’s, who has had to fill out the lineup card 92 games so far. He just seems to know who to plug in.
Granted, last night for maybe the first time in 10 playoff games, the breaks all seemed to go Vegas’ way. Not only with the uncredited assists from Goal Posts and Crossbar, but on the second Vegas goal.
Erik Haula was thrown out from taking the original faceoff and was replaced by David Perron. Perron won the faceoff and quickly slid the puck over to Haula, who sent it back to Nate Schmidt on the point. Schmidt appeared to ring his shot off the crossbar and back out of the zone. It appeared that the crossbar that had been so helpful to Fleury was returning the favor for the Sharks. Play continued until the horn was blown right in the middle of play. I was hosting a watch party at my house and immediately said, “Toronto is calling.” Some at the party didn’t understand what I meant. I guess when you watch too much hockey, you know that one of the only reasons play is stopped is if a goal was scored and no one realized it.
In his post-game interview, Coach Gallant said he knew almost immediately, when VGK video coach Tommy Cruz called down to the bench to say Schmidt’s shot was a goal, while the game on the ice continued.
The entire last 40 minutes of the game were dominated by the Knights; they literally threw a blanket over San Jose. Vegas’ first goal came from their number-one line, which has been a force, especially in this round. William Karlsson stripped the puck from a very reliable San Jose defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic, who was attempting to leave his defensive zone. Karlsson chipped the puck to Reilly Smith, who found Jonathan Marchessault in the slot. Marchessault quickly slipped the puck through Martin Jones’ pads. It was Marchessault’s fourth goal of these playoffs. This line has combined for 25 points in 10 games.
Vegas added their third goal while Martin Jones was pulled for the extra skater and in an unselfish move, Ryan Carpenter who happened to be playing against the team that released him on December 13, 2017, had a wide open net to shoot at and could have waited until Brent Burns slid by him to score. Instead, he passed it to Cody Eakin, who closed the scoring and ended the San Jose Sharks’ season.
This wasn’t only a complete team effort. It might also have been the best game VGK have played so far in the playoffs.
Other tidbits. San Jose surrendered 3-plus goals in all four losses. Eliminating San Jose ended an eight-year streak of California-based teams making it to the Conference Finals. Fleury’s four shutouts this postseason were in Games 1 of both rounds and in the clinching game of both rounds.
Vegas also became the third first-year expansion team to win their first two playoff rounds. It’s really only two teams; when the St. Louis Blues accomplished this in 1968, they played their first two rounds against the other five expansion teams that entered the league the year the NHL went from the original 6 to 12 teams. So one of the six teams was guaranteed to accomplish that. The other team that actually accomplished this was the Toronto Arenas exactly 100 years ago in 1918.
VGK goal scorers: Marchessault (4), Schmidt (2, 1 assist), Eakin (3)
You should hope for the remaining two series to both go to seven games. This is a war of attrition now and the more the opposing teams play, the more they’ll be worn down. Both Vegas and Tampa Bay will get at least five days off. We saw how the coaching staff of Vegas handled the last long layoff between the L.A. Kings and San Jose series. Rest at this time will be golden.
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