Capitals stifle Golden Knights
First success, then imitation
hard to mimic that … unless you’re our team and you have two really good centers, too.”
That was Capitals forward Devante Smith-Pelly, and he caught himself after drifting toward the typical answer of how Crosby and Malkin are the best two centers in the game. They are, yes, but they’re no longer hanging out in the penthouse by themselves.
Washington boasts Evgeny Kuznetsov and Nicklas Backstrom 1-2 down the middle, a duo that maybe isn’t Hall of Fame good but is certainly in the upper echelon league-wide. Lars Eller and Jay Beagle are plus-options anchoring the bottom-six.
Vegas got 43 goals in the regular season from William Karlsson, while Erik Haula has spent the bulk of his season between former Penguin wingers David Perron and James Neal, a group that has meshed well together. Cody Eakin is one of the better third-line centers in the league, and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare has centered a (surprisingly good) fourth line.
Another thing the Penguins brought to the forefront was using younger wingers: Bryan Rust, Jake Guentzel, Conor Sheary and others.
Vegas entrusted 22-yearold Alex Tuch with a key role and wound up getting rewarded with a 15-goal season. Coach Gerard Gallant has had a thing for Jonathan Marchessault dating to their time in Florida, while the Capitals have skewed younger with wings such as Chandler Stephenson and Jakub Vrana.
Speed it up
Matt Niskanen has been hearing it for years.
“Everyone talks about wanting to add speed and play faster,” Niskanen said. “A lot of coaches are talking like that, saying, ‘We have to play faster.’
“[The Penguins] were one of the best at it a couple years ago. Everyone has tried to catch up.”
Getting faster doesn’t necessarily mean employing the league’s best skaters.
It means playing a system that’s predicated on getting the puck out of your zone quickly, which Vegas does extremely well. It’s a style that has helped former Penguin netminder Marc-Andre Fleury thrive and put up some video game-like numbers, too.
“We try to play quick,” former Penguin defenseman Deryk Engelland said. “Our transition game, when we’re going, it’s fast. It goes back to the defense, we’re right up to the forwards and not letting teams set up. That’s key for us.”
Gallant and his players pride themselves on limiting odd-man rushes, which was formerly a strength of the Penguins and turned into a weakness this season — and one of the biggest reasons they’re at home watching the final round.
“That was one thing we noticed in Game 1 — the way that they always have guys back,” Beagle said. “You don’t really see odd-man rushes. … We saw that right away in Game 1 with these guys and how they track. They’re defensively responsible.”
From the back out
Copying the best, naturally, means finding good goaltending. Any team that makes it this far has it.
That’s why it was so important for Vegas to build its team around Fleury in the expansion draft and why the Capitals never got past the Penguins — Braden Holtby was outplayed by either Fleury or Matt Murray.
Different story this time around.
Becoming the best in this department isn’t complicated. Making key saves at key times, giving your team a boost and stealing a few playoff games are all musts to dethrone the champs and put yourself in that conversation.
“Holts is very focused and very athletic, just as MarcAndre,” Trotz said. “They’re able to make some of those key saves. When you’re focused and you’re in the moment, it’s amazing what you can get done.”
Be yourself
Although Smith-Pelly feels confident the Capitals have centers who can rival Crosby and Malkin, he said that’s not really their thing — trying to become a carbon-copy of another team.
“I’m sure teams look at their team and try to tweak some things, but I don’t know if you want to copy exactly how much the team that won the last two years,” Smith-Pelly said. “I don’t buy into that.”
That’s the hardest thing these teams have had to do: Build on the winning formula put together by those who went before them, but also stay true to who they are.
In the Capitals case, that has meant the defensemen pinching more than they did when Trotz first took over and also becoming a deeper team down the middle.
It has not meant Washington losing its physical edge, that heavy game that Penguins fans have seen from the Capitals for years.
“I don’t think we’ve talked about trying to do stuff that Pittsburgh does,” Eller said. “I think we’ve held on to our identity as a team. … We have some physical players, but we have a lot of skill and speed as well up front. Every team has a different identity based on the players they have available.”