The Golden Knights defeat the Winnipeg Jets 3-2 in Game 4 of the Western Conference Final at T-Mobile Arena. They'll meet up again on Sunday afternoon for Game 5 in Winnipeg. Game Center
LAS VEGAS – Do you dare stare at the light?
You’ve come this far, spent your life travelling here, dreaming of one day playing for this opportunity. And here it is, your chance to compete for the Stanley Cup. One win away from the Vegas Golden Knights. Do they see it there, only an arm’s length out of reach now? One more win.
The unfathomable Knights, the first year-team team comprised of National Hockey League castoffs and launched last October amid the emotional hurricane of one of the worst crimes in American history, moved one victory away from competing for the Stanley Cup by beating the Winnipeg Jets 3-2 on Friday.
Vegas leads the Western Conference Final 3-1 and on Sunday can eliminate the Jets, Canada’s best hope since the 2011 Vancouver Canucks to break the 25-year Stanley Cup famine in the country where hockey is loved the most.
Most people would have figured the Knights might win 30 games this season. They won 51, plus 11 more in the playoffs (against only three losses). You can try to explain it, but you will fail.
It’s not luck and it’s certainly not just their goalie, Marc-Andre Fleury. You can’t name all the things that have occurred to bring the Knights to this point. There are too many.
And yet, if you could name them all, it still wouldn’t adequately explain it.
“No, I can’t fully explain it,” Vegas general manager George McPhee, the chief architect of this miracle, told Sportsnet on Friday. “I’m not sure I want to try.”
“I don’t think I could,” defenceman Nate Schmidt said. “I could try and paint a picture for you. I could try and say we have great goaltending, we play great defence together, we have a team that really cares for each other. I can tell you that we’ve had a lot of guys elevate their game and we keep our emotions in check.
“I think chemistry is truly important to our team. That is what drives our team. At the end of the day, there is not a guy in here. . . that wouldn’t dive in front of a shot face-first for the guy next to him. I can’t say much more than that about a team. That’s about as good as it gets.”
The Jets are about as good as it gets in the NHL. Tn the last round they eliminated the only team that finished ahead of them during the regular season. The Jets appear to have everything: formidable size, speed and skill, a handful of talented scorers, a deep lineup, a good defence led by an impact player, and an excellent goaltender.
And the Jets are playing well. But they’re still losing. They’ve lost three straight since beating Vegas in Game 1 when the Knights hadn’t played in almost a week.
Each time the Jets appear to break through with a goal, the Knights counter immediately.
They always seem to get the goal they need, like Reilly Smith’s game-winner Friday on a partial third-period breakaway when he snapped the puck short-side past Hellebuyck, who looked as wooden and waxy as Wayne Newton did when he hand-cranked the siren inside T-Mobile Arena.
“Things are going the right way,” Vegas defenceman Luca Sbisa said. “And when they don’t, we kind of find a way to make it happen. Same thing tonight. It’s kind of been like that all year.”
Anyone who was asked in the Knights’ dressing room defaulted to the fourth-game-is-hardest-to-win babble, even though teams leading 3-1 in a series eventually advance about nine times out of 10.
“I’m happy we get to play quick,” Knights’ centre Erik Haula said. “It’s an early game in Winnipeg; just get your rest and get ready. Obviously. . . sometimes your mind wanders to places. But we’re just trying to keep it cool. We have a great opportunity right now and we just have to take advantage of it.”
Asked if he could describe the opportunity before him, Schmidt, seldom lost for words, paused several seconds, then stammered: “Not really. Not really.” (Another five-second pause). “I mean it’s a . . . (four second pause). . . there’s still another game to win.”
Just one. And then the amazing Knights will try for four more. But to get there to the light, to be close enough for them to see their reflection in the Stanley Cup, takes just one more victory. An hour’s work. They’ve won 62 times this season. What’s one more?
“There’s a lot of special things that have happened,” Haula said. “There was a lot of adversity we’ve gone through, as a community and as a team. It’s a lot of fun for us and everyone who’s involved. Everyone is just enjoying the moment.”
“We haven’t accomplished anything yet,” Sbisa said.
Then we looked to see if his pants were ablaze.
With a rotating cast of alternate captains and no one sporting the ‘C,’ the Vegas Golden Knights have had a lead-by-committee approach all season long. Clearly, it’s working, as veterans and young guys alike have taken turns stepping into a leadership role to help the league’s newest club battle well into the post-season.
Deryk Engelland, a transplanted Las Vegan who has long considered Vegas his home, has been a steady presence both on and off the ice and has been whole-heartedly embraced by his heart’s hometown in return. Marc-Andre Fleury, meanwhile, isn’t allowed to sport the captain’s C due to his position as goaltender but has very much been a captain-like presence all year with teammates and coach Gerard Gallant singing his praises early and often over the course of the team’s inaugural campaign.
“There’s no doubt. I mean, he’s the guy that runs our group,” Gallant said during a Hockey Central at Noon appearance last month. “He’s doesn’t miss anything. He’s such a professional and such a good person and everybody likes him. He’s definitely a captain type of guy.”
But if the Golden Knights were to stitch the letter ‘C’ onto one guy’s sweater, Don Cherry believes it should be that of James Neal.
“The captain is James Neal,” Cherry said Friday night, pointing to a video of Neal breaking up a tense situation during what was an eventful Game 3 for him as just one of many examples of his leadership.
Neal was named as an alternate captain prior to the season alongside Engelland, Jason Garrison, David Perron, Luca Sbisa, and Reilly Smith.
“This guy, he only played 12 minutes the other night, he was plus-three, he got knocked out and he came back,” Cherry explained.
The 30-year-old forward was on the receiving end of a forearm shot from Winnipeg Jets defenceman Dustin Byfuglien, which required him to undergo concussion protocol. He was ultimately cleared to return to play, finishing the game with a goal and an assist to help Vegas take a 2-1 series lead.
If the Golden Knights are, in fact, considering Neal as a long-term leader, they’ll have to sign him to a new deal before making any stitches. The pending unrestricted free agent has fulfilled expectations in Vegas as a goal-scorer, registering 25 goals and 44 points in 71 games for Vegas.
“He is the leader, believe me, on that club, and he’s doing a great job,” Cherry said.
LAS VEGAS — Marc-Andre Fleury is an expert on the difficulty of closing out a playoff series.
The Vegas Golden Knights goaltender has the experience to know, with his three Stanley Cup rings and 129 career NHL playoff games.
Up three games to one on the Winnipeg Jets in the NHL’s Western Conference final, the expansion Golden Knights are a win away from advancing to the Stanley Cup final thanks in large part to Fleury’s work this series.
Las Vegas has a chance to finish the Jets off in Sunday afternoon’s Game 5 in Winnipeg.
"The last one is always the toughest to get," Fleury said after his 35 saves in a 3-2 win over the Jets on Friday.
No modern-day expansion team has reached the Stanley Cup final.
The St. Louis Blues were among six teams that joined the NHL in 1967 — doubling the league to a dozen teams — when they were swept in the final by the Montreal Canadiens.
After his 33 saves in a 4-2 Game 3 win, the 34-year-old Fleury from Sorel, Que., again fended off a late Jets push when Winnipeg outshot the hosts 12-2 in the first half of the third period.
"Flower’s done a great job, making big saves time and time again," Golden Knights forward Reilly Smith said. "He’s also pretty calm in there which settles us down."
Smith scored the winner at 13:02 of the third, when Jets defenceman Dustin Byfuglien whiffed on a bouncing puck attempting a shot from the point.
Smith stole the puck and stayed a step ahead of defenders Brandon Tanev and Josh Morrissey coming back. The Toronto native got a knuckler away that beat Connor Hellebuyck over the Winnipeg goalie’s shoulder.
"I was just trying to get as much ice as I could before the other defencemen closed in," Smith said. "I pretty much just buried my head and put it on net."
William Karlsson and Tomas Nosek also scored for the Golden Knights at a raucous T-Mobile Arena.
Patrick Laine and Tyler Myers countered for the Jets, who lost their third in a row this series.
"In our minds, this series is far from over," Myers said.
Hellebuyck stopped 26 of 29 shots in the loss.
"This is a heartbreaker but we gotta move on," the Jets goalie said. "We now have everything on the line."
A Game 6, if necessary, would be back in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Vegas improved to 9-1 this post-season when scoring the first goal of the game. The Jets are 7-1, but chased the Golden Knights a third straight game after giving up a first-period goal.
Jonathan Marchessault scored 35 seconds into Game 3 and it was the left-winger from Cap-Rouge, Que., who set up the first goal less than three minutes after puck drop Friday.
Myers beat Fleury between the pads at 5:36 of the third period to pull the visitors even at 2-2,
Also like Game 3, Winnipeg tied the game in the second period only for the Knights to score less than a minute later and re-take the lead.
"All series long we’ve been doing it," Fleury said. "I feel like Winnipeg’s a team that feeds off that momentum when they get a goal. They get a goal, but we go at them right back. We’ve been scoring big goals after that."
When Hellebuyck bobbled a rebound in the second, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare scooped up the puck and attempted a wraparound goal. Nosek shoved the puck between Hellebuyck’s legs to make it 2-1 at 10:12.
Laine scored a power-play goal at 9:29 to pull the Jets even. He one-timed a shot from the face-off circle under Fleury’s arm.
With Myers serving an interference penalty, Karlsson beat Hellebuyck low glove side on a cross-ice feed from Marchessaault at 2:25.
A Game 7 would be May 24 in Winnipeg.
Notes: A moment of silence was held prior to the game for Santa Fe High School in Texas, where 10 people were killed Friday by a gunman … Golden Knights forward David Perron played Friday after sitting out two games with illness. Jets winger Nikolaj Ehlers also returned to the lineup after sitting out Game 3 with illness.
