Knights win despite getting evicted from San Jose hotel
They sweep Sharks after Fairmont Hotel bankruptcy forces them to move
SAN JOSE >> Getting kicked out of the downtown Fairmont Hotel sure didn’t ruin the Vegas Golden Knights’ weekend in San Jose.
And it’s not as if a teethlosing bar fight or old-time hockey shenanigans got them evicted.
The Knights beat the Sharks on back-to-back nights after the Fairmont filed for bankruptcy Friday and closed its doors, sending the Golden Knights packing. Talk about a power play. “When we got kicked out of our hotel, we had a real team-bonding moment, getting our stuff and finding a new place to go,” Knights coach Pete DeBoer said in Saturday’s press conference after a 4-0 shutout of the
Sharks.
The Fairmont’s financial woes prompted Friday’s early check-out for the Golden Knights and all other guests at the 805-room iconic hotel, located a short skate away from the Sharks’ SAP Center.
“We ate pregame meal then got notified our hotel was closing and we were going to have to check out,” said DeBoer, who coached the Sharks from 2015 up until his firing in December 2019.
“It was on the (Saturday) front page of the news that our hotel declared bankruptcy in the afternoon after our pregame meal,” DeBoer added. “There were a lot of moving parts the last 24 hours.”
The first-place Golden Knights packed their bags, pulled out a 5-4 overtime win Friday night over the last-place Sharks, then went from the game to a new hotel.
“We got a message saying pack your stuff when you wake up, bring it down and we ended up at a different hotel. Everything was seamless,” Vegas defenseman Nick Holden said Saturday.
“It was like nothing happened for us,” Holden added. “It’s very unfortunate, obviously, for the employees of the Fairmont, kind of finding out the same way we did. But we were able to seamlessly move to the next hotel.”
Since every visiting NHL team stayed at the Fairmont, they’ll all have to change their travel plans to San Jose, starting with the St. Louis Blues, who found a new hotel before playing the Sharks at SAP Center on Monday night.
The Sharks have had more than their share of hotels this season, too. Santa Clara County’s COVID-19 regulations kept them from playing in San Jose for nearly a year. The Sharks moved training camp to Arizona and played their first 12 games on the road before finally making this season’s SAP Center debut last month — against the Golden Knights, who won 3-1 on Feb. 13.
Eviction would seem a next-level way to sabotage a rival team’s hotel visit, at least more so than prank phone calls, fake fire alarms or car horns blaring all night. This past weekend’s hotel shortsheeting wasn’t the Sharks’ doing, however. Instead, it’s just another intriguing chapter to a rivalry that saw the Sharks oust Vegas in the 2019 playoffs, which avenged San Jose’s 2018 elimination in the conference semifinals.
“In the playoffs, they won one (series) and we won one, so (the rivalry) is still in the back of my head when we play them,” Golden Knights goaltender Marc-André Fleury told reporters after Saturday’s win. “Maybe the rivalry is not as strong as it used to be, but, in my mind, it’s always nice to win against them.”
MEIER OUT AGAIN >> Forward Timo Meier missed his second straight game Monday with a lower-body injury. Meier skated Monday morning but did not participate in pregame warmups.
With Meier out, Joachim Blichfeld was reinserted in the lineup after he served his two-game suspension for an illegal check to the head of Nathan MacKinnon last week. Blichfeld, who sat out both games with the Vegas Golden Knights, began the game on a line with Patrick Marleau and Ryan Donato.
Blichfeld reiterated he wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt MacKinnon. As he was skating toward the Sharks bench, Blichfeld clipped MacKinnon’s shoulder and head with his left shoulder. He was given a match penalty at the 8:08 mark of the third period, a call that was upheld after officials reviewed the play.
HERTL UPDATE: >> Boughner said Tomas Hertl underwent cardiac testing Monday as he began the process of returning to the Sharks’ lineup. Hertl, 27, first entered the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol on Feb. 24 as he had to start isolation after a positive coronavirus test.
If everything goes well it’s possible that Hertl could return to the Sharks’ lineup when the team plays the Anaheim Ducks on Friday and Saturday. The Sharks are scheduled to practice Wednesday and Thursday before they depart for Southern California.