The Rallying Point?

It was opening night for our softball season this evening, and we ended capturing victory for a mini-celebration at the end of the game. As we descended upon the local watering hole, we were treated to another Vegas Golden Knights comeback as they went up 3-0 in their Western Conference Final series against the President's Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche. No one is saying that Vegas was incapable of this moment, but one of my teammates gave me pause when he said that the NHL's penalties assessed against Vegas following their series win over Anaheim may have led to this outcome. Hear me out on this because there may be some truth here.

For a long time, the Vegas Golden Knights have embraced this villain mentality in the NHL, resulting in an "us versus the world" attitude for the franchise and its fans. While there isn't a lot of hard evidence to back those statements up, it seems to be the adopted persona of Vegas and its fans in these Stanley Cup Playoffs as well. A lot of this is due to being loaded with hockey talent, having cutthroat business practices, and not caring what people say or think about them.

This season seemed to be the exclamation point for that "us versus the world" attitude as they signed Mitch Marner, they signed the radioactive Team Canada goalie, and they fired their former Stanley Cup-winning coach in Bruce Cassidy with eight games to play in the regular season, replacing him with the fiery John Tortorella who, in his own right, has a bit of an "I'll do it my way; everyone else be damned" mentality. The last thing that this team needed was someone giving them something to rally around, and the NHL may have done that with their fine and penalty given to Vegas.

Officially, that loss of a draft pick and large fine won't be recorded in the annals of history as the catalyst for what happened in this series between Vegas and Colorado, but it makes me wonder that, over the last nine days, Vegas programmed that "us versus the world" doctrine into each of the Golden Knights' players. It's almost as if Vegas, with their absolute resolve, said to the NHL, "Since you took our draft pick, we're taking your Stanley Cup. We dare you to try and stop us."

Of course, all of this is just speculation and conjecture. As stated above, there's zero evidence of any of this stuff being true, and it could simply be that the Vegas Golden Knights are playing better hockey than the Colorado Avalanche. Based each game's finish, the Golden Knights are playing better team hockey than the Avalanche, specifically in the third period where they've outscored the Avalanche by a 7-2 mark. That, to me, suggests they want it more.

Moreso than anything else, I've read and heard stories about teams finding something that unites the players into a singular focus as they hunt down sixteen wins in the postseason. For their 2018 run, Vegas used their "cast of misfits" identity and the "Vegas Strong" message as rallying points to push them to the Stanley Cup Final. In 2023, Vegas won the Stanley Cup using the motto "It hurts to win" as a reflection on the sacrifices players put their bodies through during playoff runs.

The Golden Knights really don't have a rivalry with Utah, so there wasn't anything to rally around as Vegas won that series in six games. The same goes for Vegas and Anaheim where there hasn't been a lot of hate between the two, and the Golden Knights sent the Ducks home in six games where, at the conclusion of the series, John Tortorella refused to speak to the media and Vegas made no players available. The NHL responded with a harsh penalty, Vegas's appeal failed, and now it seems like the Golden Knights are laser-focused.

Correlation does not mean causation, though, and these individual events could all be random occurences that look like a sequence of events. I'm not in the Golden Knights' room nor do I have access to any of the meetings the coaches, players, and management have, so we'll have to wait to see if there are any stories about motivating events for the Golden Knights that forced them to rise to the occasion in taking a 3-0 series lead against the NHL's best team.

Choose the saying you like - "let sleeping dogs lie", "don't poke the bear", or "don't kick the hornet's nest" as examples - but the Golden Knights are one win from playing for the Stanley Cup once again. And it doesn't seem like they're playing for second-place this year.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!