After thrilling OT win, have odds turned in Sharks’ favor?
How expansion Vegas reacts to its first high-stress scenario remains to be seen
SAN JOSE >> They say that expectations are like fine pottery. The harder you hold them, the more likely they are to crack.
The Vegas Golden Knights will put this idea to test when their second-round series with the Sharks shifts to San Jose for today’s Game 3 at the SAP Center tied at 1-1.
Throughout their inaugural season, the Golden Knights have benefitted from the reality that they’re playing with house money this year. No one expected them to be the first expansion team in NHL history to put together a winning season, let alone reach the Stanley Cup playoffs and knock off the Los Angeles Kings in the opening round.
But after they ran the Sharks out of the barn with a 7-0 win in Game 1 on Thursday, things changed. The Knights became clear favorites, and with expectations comes pressure, something that’s about as foreign to this team as a clock in a casino.
The Knights managed to get through their first season without having to really squeeze the stick at any point. After winning eight of their first nine games, the Knights held a five-point cushion for a Western Conference playoff spot on Oct. 29. They grabbed hold of first place in the Pacific Division the night before Thanksgiving and never really looked back.
As the winter progressed, the hockey world continued to wait for a demise that never came. The Knights hit a couple bumps in the road. They lost three straight games, for instance, as the calendar turned from February to March. Still, they cruised to a playoff berth and a division title without confronting a test that came anything close to resembling a must-win game.
Even after it became glaringly clear that the Knights success wasn’t a fluke, they entered their series with the Kings as underdogs in the eyes of most experts. The line of thinking went something like this: that was cute, now let’s see how this band of misfits handles a hard and physical series against a two-time Stanley Cup champion. The answer: sweep.
Instead of getting beat up and brought back down to earth, the Knights knocked off the Kings in Game 1 and then did it three more times. The fun of playing Cinderella just spilled over into the playoffs. They advanced without experiencing the stress of falling behind in a series, choking up a game or facing elimination.
Now, they’re about to get their first real
taste of adversity, skating into SAP Center Monday after letting a 2-0 lead, and an opportunity to bury the Sharks, slip through their fingers in Game 2.
Instead of continuing to pressure the Sharks with their speed, the Knights got caught up in trying to win a battle royal. James Neal got into it with Timo Meier and Dylan DeMelo. David Perron exchanged shots with Brenden Dillon throughout the night, leading to a pair of coinciding penalties. Ryan Carpenter mixed it up with Brent Burns, Marc-Edouard Vlasic wrestled with Jonathan Marchessault and William Carrier threw a dangerous hit on DeMelo.
Knights coach Gerard Gallant suggested after Game 2 that overconfidence slipped into his dressing room after Thursday’s blowout on the Strip.
“They better be ready in (Game 3) because we didn’t show up for 45 minutes tonight,” the Knights coach said. “Whether we thought it was going to be easy — what we thought, I don’t know. But we didn’t show up to play our game tonight and it cost us big time.”
It’s impossible to predict how the Knights will respond to Saturday’s
let down because they’re literally entering uncharted territory. They haven’t played a single game knowing that a loss would put them in a compromised position, a scenario that’s all too familiar to the Sharks’ leadership core.
If the Sharks hold an edge in this series, it’s in the arena of experience, a variable that’s impossible to measure but often rears its head in the playoffs, nevertheless.
The Sharks know what it’s like to play with a series lead, to fall behind, to cough up a 3-0 lead and win in Game 7 and to feel the humiliation of a reverse sweep. They’ve been favorites and underdogs.
If they lose this series, it won’t be because they caved into the pressure of the moment. They’ve proven that resiliency is written into their DNA.
How about the Knights? What will we find in their genetic code when we finally get a chance to take a look under the microscope this week?
Will the porcelain crack under the weight of expectations or will the Knights brush aside the pressure and come out like they did in Game 1.
Heading into Game 3, the series looks like a toss-up.