Rallying from deficits is a strength that has been evident virtually all season.
LAS VEGAS — Billy Joel has sung about it. John Tortorella has been preaching it since he got here a month ago.
In hockey, as it is in relationships, it’s a matter of trust.
In the case of the Vegas Golden Knights, it’s a matter of resilience too. Same goes for the Utah Mammoth.
Want to know why this has been a great opening-round Stanley Cup Playoff series? You have two teams that refuse to capitulate. Two teams that even if they’re trailing, refuse to quit.
And on a night where both teams’ star players showed up and delivered, when it came to determining a winner, it was Brett Howden, who came through, beating Karel Vejmelka 5:28 into the second overtime to give the Knights a 5-4 win Wednesday at T-Mobile Arena and a 3-2 series lead with Game 6 Friday at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.
Game 5’s in best-of-seven series are always pivotal and Wednesday night was no different. If Utah finds a way to bounce back and win, the Mammoth get the opportunity to clinch at home in front of their raucous crowd. If Vegas wins, it has momentum and the upper hand in the series, needing only one more win with two opportunities to get that W, including Game 7, which will be at home Sunday if necessary..
Somebody was going to be the hero. Why not Howden? He has shown a knack for doing so in the past. His OT winner in Game 5 during last year’s opening round vs. Minnesota gave the Knights a 3-2 lead and Vegas would go on to win the series. And in 2023, he won Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals vs. Dallas in OT, 4-3.
Wednesday, he started the game on the Knights’ top line with Jack Eichel and Ivan Barbashev as Tortorella continued his mixing and matching, desperately trying to find the right combinations to give his team the upper hand. But despite 32 shifts and nearly 20 minutes through four periods of hockey, he had yet to register a single shot on goal. He did have five hits to his credit so his physical presence was contributing to the overall effort.
But Howden and his teammates stayed resilient — that word again — They trailed 1-0. Then 2-1. Then 4-3 before Pavel Dorofeyev delivered with 53 seconds remaining for a hat trick which tied it. And when the opportunity presented itself, Howden seized it.
He got the puck in the Utah zone, wheeled into the slot, then fired a shot over Vejmelka and in, sending what remained of the sellout crowd of 18,033 into a frenzy.
One shot. One goal.
“I went to the corner, the puck popped out and I was just trying to get a shot,” he said with an ample dose of humility.
It’s a trait these Knights have displayed all year. They never feel they’re out of it. Chasing the game is part and parcel of what they do.
“It’s something we’ve prided ourselves on all season,” said Eichel. “So much credit to the guys in the locker room. There’s a calmness and a confidence within our group.”
For Tortorella, he doesn’t have to keep his guys calm when they trail. He’s got a mature group that handles pressure well from within.
“You need to have it come from within the room,” he said of the formula for mental toughness. We’ve seen it through the five games.”
Andre Tourigny, the Utah coach, has seen similar traits from his guys. And while he has players with Stanley Cup rings — Nate Schmidt, Ian Cole, Mikahil Sergachev and Vitek Vanecek — it’s a collective effort when it comes to being resilient. It’s something that takes time to instill within an organization. And for the Mammoth, which is in the postseason for the first time, it is a learning process.
Ultimately, it may be the intangible which allows Vegas to advance to the second round against either Anaheim or Edmonton. Only an ignorant person or someone so jaded in their fandom would’ve thought the Knights would simply show up and roll over Utah. It rarely works that way in the NHL. Even when you sweep a series, as Colorado did against the Kings, you still have to earn you way, picking up battle scars as you go along.
And make no mistake. Utah is a good hockey club, even though it doesn’t refer to itself in that fashion anymore now that it has a nickname.
Monday, the Knights squandered a 3-0 lead, trailed 4-3 thanks to Utah’s resiliency in staging its comeback with four unanswered goals before Howden tied the game and sent it into OT where Shea Theodore was the hero when he scored with 53 seconds left. Teams that aren’t resilient don’t win that game.
Wednesday, it was a battle from the opening faceoff and, as Tortorella described it, a slugfest. It took everyone to contribute, whether it was Carter Hart making some big stops in both OTs, to the fourth line of Nic Dowd, Colton Sissons and Cole Smith forechecking and harrassing the Utah defense to keep control in there Mammoth end, to Eichel, who had the game on his stick on a breakaway only to be denied by Vejmelka moments before Howden’s heroics.
“You can tell they never feel like they’re out of it,” Tortorella said.
Howden said: “I think it speaks volumes to the leadership we have. There’s a sense of calmness in the room.”
Resilience and trust. It’s a formula that is working for Tortorella and the Golden Knights. Now they need it to work one more time to keep playing.
Category: General Sports
