Golden Knights have plenty of Game 7 experience — but not at home until now
Golden Knights get third decisive game in three playoff seasons
T-mobile Arena is about to take another step in its evolution as an NHL arena.
It’s about to host its first Game 7.
The Golden Knights and Minnesota Wild will meet for the final time in the first round at 6 p.m. Friday in the first Game 7 of the 2021 NHL playoffs. It will mark the third time in three years the Knights will play a seventh game after taking a 3-1 series lead.
This time, the Wild battled back with a 4-2 win Monday at T-mobile Arena and a 3-0 victory Wednesday at Xcel Energy Center.
The winner gets the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche, who have been idle since finishing a sweep of St. Louis on Sunday. The first game of that series is scheduled for 5 p.m. PT Sunday in Denver.
“There’s a lot of playoff experience in that (locker) room,” Knights coach Pete Deboer said. “The guys in there know that every day you wake up in the playoffs and you still got an opportunity to play, it’s a great day. That’s what we’ve got. Excited about tomorrow night. I know our group’s going to be ready. We’ll let it fly.”
The Knights are 1-1 in Game 7s.
They lost 5-4 in overtime at the San Jose Sharks in the first round of their second season. They led 3-0 in the third period before a controversial and infamous major penalty call on center Cody Eakin sparked a Sharks comeback.
The loss made the Knights the most
recent team to lose a series after taking a 3-1 lead. Twenty-eight other teams have done it in NHL history.
The Knights avoided the same fate last postseason by defeating the Vancouver Canucks 3-0 in Game 7 of the second round in the NHL’S Edmonton, Alberta, bubble. The game was tied until defenseman Shea Theodore scored a power-play goal with 6:08 remaining. The team added two empty-net goals.
The Knights aren’t lacking for big-game experience. Deboer is 5-0 in Game 7s, the first coach in NHL history to win his first five Game 7s.
That includes victories in both of the Knights’ Game 7s on opposite sides.
Defensemen Alec Martinez and Alex Pietrangelo, both Stanley Cup winners, are 4-0 in Game 7s. Goaltender Marc-andre Fleury is 3-4, and Robin Lehner is 1-0 after shutting out the Canucks.
“We believe in ourselves,” captain Mark Stone said. “We believe in our team. We have one game in our home rink to move on. It’s that simple.”
The key to the Knights’ hopes is their scoring. The team scored nine goals to sweep Games 3 and 4 in Minnesota. It has five goals in the other four games.
Stone (five points) and left wing Alex Tuch (four) are the only players with more than three points for the Knights in the series. Left wing Max Pacioretty, the team’s leading goal scorer, hasn’t played in the series because of an injury. Theodore, fourth in points in the regular season with 42, has none in six games.
“Minnesota’s a very good defensive team,” Deboer said. “We knew coming into this series these were going to be low-scoring games and it was going to be hard to create offense. We feel we’re a good defensive team, too. We’ve battled back and forth through that through the six games.”
The Wild appear confident after winning the past two games. They’re 3-0 in Game 7s in their history and have erased 3-1 deficits twice. All of their Game 7 wins have been on the road.
Wild goaltender Cam Talbot is 0-1 in Game 7s. He allowed two goals on 30 shots for the Edmonton Oilers in a 2-1 loss to the Anaheim Ducks in the second round in 2017.
“I think this is what everyone was dreaming of when they were a kid,” said Minnesota center Joel Eriksson Ek, who declared himself “good” after briefly leaving Game 6 in the third period. “Going into a Game 7, it’s going to be really fun. This is what everyone wants to do. You want to play important games.”