The Golden Knights can hoist the Stanley Cup as soon as Tuesday by beating the Panthers on home ice in Las Vegas. But the immediate task for players and coaches is not to dwell on how close they are.
Veteran defenseman Alex Pietrangelo, who captained the St. Louis Blues to their first title in franchise history four years ago in a seven-game final against the Bruins, said it’s possible to overthink things in this situation.
His approach now?
“Try and get your brain away from it,” Pietrangelo said. “Get some rest, spend some time with our families, and get ready to go back to work.”
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The work so far has been nearly immaculate. Vegas has clearly been the better team in the final against Florida, and absent a late comeback in Game 3 might have been flying home Sunday with the Cup. The Golden Knights held on Saturday night in Game 4 in Sunrise, Fla., for a 3-2 victory.
But the job isn’t done yet, and coach Bruce Cassidy knows all too well what it’s like to be one win away. His Bruins lost to Pietrangelo’s Blues in that 2019 final, so he’s not satisfied with getting to this point, no matter how well his team has played thus far.
“We’ll hit the ice and we’ll work on some things we feel we can do better from the previous four games and keep our rhythm up and get our touches in and heart rate up, etc., and prepare for the last one,” Cassidy said Sunday. “I think our preparation this time will be similar to what we’ve done with every other game. We know it’s a close-out game. I don’t have to tell the players that. They know what’s at stake.”
At stake, the dream Pietrangelo and a few of his teammates have lived out. Pietrangelo, Chandler Stephenson, Ivan Barbashev, Alec Martinez, and backup goaltender Jonathan Quick have lifted the Cup before, while the rest of their teammates who have played this postseason have not.
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Many have been on long runs — the six original Knights players who lost to Stephenson and the Capitals in 2018 — plus guys such as captain Mark Stone, who reached Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final in 2017 with Ottawa. Stone does not expect to alter his approach after it has worked so well so far.
“We understand the magnitude of the process, but we’re going to go home and take the game as if it’s one game for us,” Stone said after winning Game 4 Saturday. “We ain’t changing anything. We’ll make minor adjustments to our game, for sure, but we want to continue to play our brand of hockey and be ready to go.”
The Panthers have to do something to change the tide of the series. They scored twice to cut into a three-goal deficit in Game 4, but their comeback bid fell short to put them on the brink of elimination.
Florida erased a 3-1 series deficit in the first round against the Bruins, who set NHL records for the most wins and points in a regular season. That experience becomes valuable now as the Panthers try to become the first team to win the final after falling behind 3-1 since 1942.
“You draw on your routine from the last time, your last experience with it,” coach Paul Maurice said. “There is in some ways an advantage to the team at times that’s down 3-1 in terms of the freedom mentally that it can play with. At the same time, you’re down 3-1 for a reason, so clearly the other team has been good. But we have some experience with this, and we’ll draw on it.”
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The biggest question facing the Panthers is whether they’ll have Matthew Tkachuk in Game 5. Tkachuk missed more than 10 minutes of the third period Saturday before returning for the conclusion of the failed comeback bid.
Asked Sunday about the status of Tkachuk and other banged-up players, including winger Anthony Duclair, coach Paul Maurice said they’d get treatment before flying and then again after landing in Las Vegas.
Tkachuk was clearly not 100 percent late in Game 4 and didn’t want to divulge when or where he was injured. But it would have taken a lot to keep Tkachuk, Florida’s emotional leader and top playoff scorer, off the ice.