Holtby’s larceny handcuffs Knights
LAS VEGAS — Vegas Golden Knights winger Alex Tuch got his stick on the skittering puck with nothing between him and the tying goal with two minutes left in Wednesday’s Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final.
Washington Capitals goalie Braden Holtby reacted with pure instinct.
Holtby lunged to his right and got the paddle of his stick on Tuch’s shot, two inches in front of the goal line.
“Luckily it hit me,” Holtby said with a shrug.
The Washington goalie’s coaches and teammates weren’t quite so calm about a save that will go down in Caps history as the key to a 3-2 victory that knotted the best-ofseven series 1-1.
The win was the Caps’ firstever in a Stanley Cup final — and the save might be a catalyst to even bigger things.
“To me, it was the hockey gods,” Washington coach Barry Trotz said.
“The hockey gods evened it up for the first game. Great save. You could see the emotion on our bench. Once he made that save, I knew we were going to win.”
Holtby made 37 saves, but he got help from earthly sources as well.
Alex Ovechkin scored a powerplay goal, Brooks Orpik ended a personal 220-game goal drought with the eventual winner and Lars Eller added a goal and two assists.
“We refocus and pick each other up and that’s a sign of a good team,” Holtby said.
Game 3 is on Saturday night in Washington.
The Caps are just 4-5 at home in this postseason, but they’ll ride a wave of momen- tum after going into the Golden Knights’ back yard and taking away home-ice advantage in Washington’s first Stanley Cup final in 20 years.
After dropping the series opener 6-4, Holtby made several big saves throughout Game 2, particularly while Washington killed a 5-on-3 disadvantage for 1:09 earlier in the third period.
He capped his energetic performance with that jaw-dropping stick save on Tuch with 1:59 to play.
“He just made the save of the year,” Washington forward Jay Beagle said. “Maybe the save of a lifetime. It’s unreal.”
The T-Mobile Arena crowd was stunned, after several months of watching the expansion Knights push through every obstacle.
“Thank God he’s our goalie,” Ovechkin said. “He’s over there when we need him, and it was probably the save of the year, for sure.”
Washington overcame another big blow when it lost leading scorer Evgeny Kuznetsov to an upper-body injury in the first period after a big hit from Vegas defenseman Brayden McNabb, but the Caps avoided any hotheaded retaliation and concentrated on a gritty effort that was enough to even the series.
James Neal and Shea Theodore scored and Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 23 shots for the upstart Knights, who couldn’t summon their usual clutch magic.
Thanks to Holtby’s 15 saves, Vegas finally went scoreless in the third for the first time in six periods in this series.
Washington handed the Golden Knights only their second home defeat — and first in regulation — in Vegas’ nine postseason games.
“I think it’s really important that we take a step back and take a deep breath and know that we’re not going to win this series in two games,” Vegas defenseman Nate Schmidt said.
“We’re a special group. We can go out and win games on the road. We’ve done it all playoffs.”
So have the Capitals, who improved to 9-3 on the road after two games in this frequently chaotic series.
Washington has made the playoffs in 13 of 19 seasons since its only other trip to the final in 1998, but hadn’t managed to return to the championship round until this year.
Capital One Arena in downtown Washington was packed with red-clad fans watching Game 2 on huge videoboards.
The temperature on the Las Vegas Strip spiked to triple digits on the Fahrenheit scale in the hours before Game 2, likely making it the hottest Stanley Cup final contest in NHL history.
But the heat didn’t fry the spirit of fans who filled the plaza next to the arena to capacity before the puck dropped, continuing this gambling mecca’s fanatical support of its first major pro sports team.
Shortly after Neal opened the scoring for Vegas in Game 2, Kuznetsov went straight to the dressing room after absorbing a high check from McNabb.
The game immediately took on a nastier tone, and went to 4-on-4 hockey moments later after a prolonged scrum led to coincidental penalties.