For Golden Knights, first sign of real trouble
Capitals’ team defence dictating flow of Stanley Cup finals as Vegas scrambles
You can check another one off the list.
The Vegas Golden Knights, who set records for just about everything in their first year in the National Hockey League, accomplished another first when they lost 3-1 to the Washington Capitals in Saturday’s Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals.
It’s the first hint of trouble for the Knights in these playoffs, being down 2-1 with their backs to the wall heading into Monday’s Game 4. Sure, they lost the first game of the conference final against Winnipeg, but they ended up winning that series 4-1. They swept Los Angeles in the first round and beat San Jose in six games in Round 2.
Unable to score. Unable to generate offence. This is as frustrated as we’ve seen the Golden Knights, who for the first time in the playoffs — and the regular season — are starting to look like an expansion team.
That it’s come at the hands of an unheralded and mostly no-name Washington defence, well, that’s as surprising as Vegas’ appearance in the final in the first place. Then again, this isn’t the same ol’ Washington team everyone had come to expect.
The Capitals, as we saw against the Columbus Blue Jackets,
the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Tampa Lightning on their route to the final, can frustrate you more than they can wow you. This isn’t Bruce Boudreau’s run-and-gun offence. This team smothers and suffocates. It backchecks and blocks shots and protects leads as if they’re state secrets.
“It’s tough to score,” said Vegas winger James Neal. “They sit back. We saw them do that in the Tampa series. They clogged them up — a skill team — and they transition quick. We know that. You have a little bit of time, you think you can make a play, have some room to skate, and then it gets clogged up pretty quick.”
“Clog ” and “sit back” are words not usually associated with a team captained by Alex Ovechkin. Then again, forget everything you thought you knew about Ovechkin and the Capitals. Like the Golden Knights, they are writing a new history.
In Game 3, the Capitals put their bodies in front of 26 shots and forced the Golden Knights to miss the net 23 times. That’s 49 shots that goaltender Braden Holtby didn’t have to stop. And for a team that’s allowed 28.6 shots per game in the playoffs — only Pittsburgh gave up fewer shots — the attention to team defence has become the new identity.
“We just knew there was another level we could get to,” says Caps head coach Barry Trotz. “We worked on it for a big part of the last quarter of the season and it started showing results. With our system — I’m not going to go into detail — we just talked about
having numbers and layers and making it difficult. This game is about mistakes, and those mistakes can lead to scoring chances. We wanted to insulate certain areas of our game and we did it.”
It’s another way of saying that Washington’s defence is not strictly limited to its defencemen. It’s a team-wide approach. Thirteen of the 26 blocked shots in Game 3 came from forwards, with Ovechkin sacrificing his body on two of them.
“I think this is the most complete level you’ve seen of Ovie,” said Trotz. “There’s no question about his level of commitment on both sides of the puck, his level of commitment in the hard areas, his level of commitment to impose his will.”
The Capitals have needed that two-way game from Ovechkin and the rest of the forwards. They don’t have the Lightning ’s defence. There’s no Norris Trophy candidates back there. After losing Kevin Shattenkirk, Karl Alzner and Nate Schmidt in the off-season, the defence is basically John Carlson and a bunch of interchangeable parts.
“A lot of people doubted whether we had the personnel to be any good this year,” said defenceman Matt Niskanen, who has eight points and a plus-7
rating in the playoffs. “I think everybody within our team saw the potential, and we just had to keep working at it.”
In the playoffs, the Capitals have played what they call “inyour-face” hockey. Whether it’s a defenceman or a forward, each Washington player is being counted on to make life difficult for the opposition by taking away their time and space. It’s a system based on trust and hard work, but it seems to be paying off.
In the second round, Washington held Pittsburgh’s Phil Kessel and Evgeni Malkin to one goal combined. Against Tampa Bay, Steven Stamkos went without a single even-strength point. And now, Vegas is running against the same wall, with the Golden Knights’ top line of William Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith having gone the last two games without any points playing five-on-five.
“We got to step up our game,” said Vegas head coach Gerard Gallant. “In the three games, we haven’t been good enough. If we don’t step up our game, the same result is going to happen tomorrow night. We’ll see what we’re made of.”