Sharks try to turn hate for Knights into a rivalry
The image is iconic. Barclay Goodrow on the edge of the crease, stickhandling around the right pad of Marc-Andre Fleury to score in overtime and cap the wildest comeback in Sharks team history.
From a Sharks perspective, Goodrow’s goal in Game 7 of their 2019 first-round playoff series with the Vegas Golden Knights remains the unquestioned pinnacle of the rivalry between the two teams.
Since then, it’s been pretty onesided, to the point where some Golden Knights players are wondering if there’s still much of a competition between the two teams at all.
Going into Monday’s game between the two teams at T-Mobile Arena, the Sharks are just 1-5-1 against the Golden Knights since the start of the 2019-2020 season, getting outscored 25-10 along the way. The Sharks have yet to hold a lead in their three games against Vegas this year.
That has to change soon if the seventh-place Sharks hope to make up ground in the West Division. Although they like how the second half of the season shapes up, with 19 of their last 28 games at home, the Sharks still play Vegas five more times and will probably need to peel away some points from the Golden Knights to get into the top division’s four.
“That’s a huge test for us,” winger Matt Nieto said after the Sharks beat the Anaheim Ducks 3-1 on Saturday for their third straight win. “We’re playing great hockey these last three games. We’ve really had four lines going and all of our defense, everyone’s buying into the system.
“We’re going against a really good team here coming up and it would be huge for us to come out of there with some wins.”
Vegas, a legitimate Stanley Cup contender since it came into the NHL four years ago, leads the West Division with an 18-6-1 record. The Sharks (11-11-3) are playing their best hockey of the season, but are in a ‘reset’ mode, as general manager Doug Wilson termed it earlier this week, with realistic dreams of their own Cup at least another year away.
“We used to have a pretty good rivalry,” Vegas forward Jonathan Marchessault said after his team’s 4-0 win over the Sharks on March 6 at SAP Center to sweep a two-game series. “Now it’s not as powerful as it was the two first years. It’s always good to get a win. We came here and took care of business.”
“I feel like in the playoffs, they won one and we won one, so to me, that’s still in the back of my head when I play them,” Fleury said that same day, mentioning the Golden Knights’ 2018 playoff series win over San Jose. “We’re at the top of the standings, and they’re at the bottom, and maybe because of that the rivalry is not asstrongasitusedtobe.
“But in my mind, it’s always nice to win against them.”
Despite the disparity in the standings, there’s no doubt the two teams still hate each other.
There’s been 58 minutes of penalties between the two teams in three games, highlighted by a
fight between Ryan Reaves and Kurtis Gabriel on March 5. As one might expect, there’s been no shortage of chatter between the teams, either.
“There’s a lot of talking going on out there, it’s definitely a lot of emotion and there’s for sure some animosity between these two,” said goalie Devan Dubnyk, one of the Sharks players that’s new to the rivalry, earlier this month.
“I know the history goes back a long way with the playoff series and whatnot, so you can certainly feel it when I was on the bench. I mean, you can hear it all, hear the back and forth and here’s definitely some animosity there.”
Nieto was with the Colorado Avalanche when the Sharks Golden Knights rivalry was first getting going, and got his first taste of the distaste between the two teams before their first meeting on Feb. 13 in San Jose.
“It’s fun to be a part of,” Nieto said earlier this month. “Before the game just talking to the guys, hearing about all the hatred and stuff, it gets you fired up. These are fun hockey games to play. These are regular-season games but they have that playoff kind of atmosphere, and it’s fun.”
The atmosphere inside Las Vegas’ 17,500-seat arena could be close to normal soon.
As of now, gatherings inside Nevada venues with more than 2,500 seats are capped at 20 percent capacity, although new relaxed measures recently announced by Gov. Steve Sisolak could increase that to 50 percent if organizers obtain prior approval and other conditions are met. It is unclear if the Golden Knights have obtained that approval. An email to a team spokesperson was not immediately returned.
In either case, it appears Monday and Wednesday’s crowds will be the largest the Sharks have played before this season.
Now it’s a matter of whether the Sharks can make this a rivalry again.