It’s no surprise that the Vegas Golden Knights and Utah Mammoth are tied after two games into their seven-game first-round series. The clubs were extremely evenly matched statistically entering the series. One stark difference between the two was that Utah spent much more time in the lead than Vegas did over their 82-game regular season schedules.
I thought our 1st period was one of our better first periods in a while. One of the better ones since I’ve been here. Just lost any type of flow in the 2nd period. – John Tortorella
One regular season trend that has unfortunately carried over into the playoffs is Vegas’ inability to stay in the lead. It was highlighted over the season, and punctuated when the Golden Knights finshed second to last in the NHL in time spent trailing. In the postseason, they are among one of six teams to hold a lead for less than 10 minutes. Three of them are two games away from being swept.
So far, through 120 minutes, the Golden Knights have been ahead for 8:59. Utah hasn’t exactly dominated in this category either, holding a six-minute edge at 15:42.
Thought we had a good start to the 3rd period and we had some opportunities. We couldn’t score. They find a way with some of their speed. We’ve got a couple of things that we’ve got to fix. That’s why it’s a series. – John Tortorella
The bottom line is, the Golden Knights aren’t allowing themselves enough time for success. You can’t always rely on the power play to break a tie. Also, chasing takes up more energy, and Utah has been noticeably faster, especially in the final period of Game 2.
Vegas proved, once again, they can overcome 3rd period deficits in Game 1. However, they couldn’t repeat the same success in Game 2. Considering the fact that VGK have trailed on four separate occasions through two games, a split series isn’t a terrible outcome. Trailing in the 3rd period in both of the opening two playoff games is not advised. Wire-to-wire wins have been hard to come by for VGK this year, I’m sure coach Tortorella would rather his stars break out in Game 3, spend the majority of the game ahead, and take control of the series right back.
JB
The only way we will beat these guys is to pound them like we did in game one. They are too fast . Must hit them repeatedly to slow them down. That crowd and arena will be rocking in game three. They will smoke us if we don’t slow them down. And if Jack doesn’t start playing like he can then we are in trouble any way. Can’t depend on the bottom six to win games for us. Come on! Grow some and let’s F’ing go!
DeezNutz
It still amazes me how much difficulty this team has scoring goals. Maybe if they weren’t dominating large stretches of games and creating lots of grade A high danger chances I could understand but it’s like you watch them do so much right to set up offense and then piss themselves when it comes down to actually converting their chances to goals. It’s frustrating to watch because all of that effort and skill is basically for nothing and it’s not just playoffs this happens to them all the time during the regular season also. All those additions to the team and we still need players that can score goals.
TS
Agreed, Deez.
Larry
Let’s go Ducks, good job Ducks!
JB
Yea, they beat those @#$& oilers!