Technically speaking, the Vegas Golden Knights are -140 favorites to win over the Los Angeles Kings in the first round. That’s the line at William Hill Sportsbooks which essentially indicates that they believe there’s about a 55-60% chance the Golden Knights will win the series.
When it comes to looking at the selections of many experts, the Golden Knights have definitely been selected less than the Kings, but that doesn’t mean no one is taking Vegas. Here on SinBin.vegas, we believe the Golden Knights are absolutely the favorites and think they’ll win in five games.
All of these opinions have turned the Vegas vs. Los Angeles series into one of the most intriguing of all eight matchups in the first round.
Do you feel like an underdog? -SinBin.vegas
Yeah. I mean, do we have a Drew Doughty or an Anze Kopitar? -Jonathan Marchessault
But you won the Pacific Division though? -SinBin.vegas
As a team yeah, but some of the best players in the world are on the other team and when you have that people expect you to win. -Marchessault
Are you guys favorites in this series? -SinBin.vegas
I’ll tell you after 6, 7 games. -Nate Schmidt
Going in though, do you feel like you are favorites or are you dogs? -SinBin.vegas
I think we can win the series. -Schmidt
Are you the favorites? -SinBin.vegas
No. -Gerrard Gallant
So you are an underdog? -SinBin.vegas
No. (laughter). Both teams won two games in the regular season and they were close games. I think it’s going to be two great hockey teams battling it out. They’ve got a lot of experience, that’s what I look at. Their team’s been together a lot, but that hasn’t affected us. I’m very confident in our group. I love our group. They’ve played hard all long, so we’ll see what happens. -Gallant
Let’s put it this way, no one really knows, and that’s what makes this such a fun series. No matter what you put stock in, you can come up with a compelling argument for both sides.
Underdogs, favorites, somewhere in between, who know’s who is actually right. All we really do know is we’re about to find out.
Jonathan
I’m with you guys, I’ve been saying Knights in 5 or 6 but given a great goaltender like Quick sure I want to say 6 because of puck luck. The basic reality though is on paper nobody using logic or statistics should pick the Kings. It’s a purely emotional pick because of the idea of some “playoff magic” from years ago having very little to do with anything. Fleury and Quick are roughly evenly matched (I’m being nice since Fleury was better this last year and better the last time each made the playoffs), the Kings defense is better than the Knights defense, but the Knights offense is elite in all of the league and the Kings is horrible. I think they padded their stats against bad teams because their offense feels like the worst in the NHL whenever I watch it. A couple of star players doesn’t a good team make. They don’t play as a team, either. They’re sloppy and disorganized. I think they were fortunate our guys missed an astonishing number of shots and I think this was their game to steal. Having lost Game 1, not so good for the Kings. I think the offense comes alive in Game 2. Not sure if we win because it could be a 4-3 loss but I suspect we put up some goals. I love the way we controlled the puck though and since the Kings are a terrible first period team and we are great at holding leads, that honestly doesn’t bode well for them at all.