SALT LAKE CITY — Vegas Golden Knights head coach John Tortorella was a man of few words on Monday morning. Or rather, a man of four words:
“We’re ready to play,” he said before Monday’s optional morning skate at Delta Center ahead of Game 4 of the team’s first-round bout against the Utah Mammoth.
He said it twice more within a media availability that lasted all of a minute and 13 seconds.
Are there good and bad aspects to having two days off between games on the road?
“Nope, doesn’t matter. We’re ready to play,” he said.
How do you combine encouraging players to keep a relaxed mindset with striking the right sense of urgency?
Again, the same refrain: “We’re ready to play.”
Message received. And, if we take the man at his word, the team we see emerge from the tunnel Monday night in Utah will be a focused group intent on taking back the edge from the team that just beat them twice in a row.
Tortorella’s tone on Monday was decidedly different than the one we heard post-game Friday, following his squad’s 4-2 loss at the Delta Center. A magical night for the Mammoth, playing post-season hockey in front of their home fans for the first time ever, was a bit of a head-scratcher for the visitors. Vegas held Utah to just 12 shots on goal, but the opportunistic Mammoth made good on four of them. Compare that to the Golden Knights’ shot count of 32 — a whopping 20 more than the game’s winners — and you’ve got one of the more perplexing stat lines you’ll see in this sport.
Still, Tortorella preached positivity following the game. Sure, he’d like to see some of the goal-scorers get “on track,” but he insisted he “did like a lot of our minutes” in Friday’s game. Defensively, that checks out. Offensively, things are about to change.
Tortorella didn’t name names when he talked about those off-track goal-scorers, but he didn’t need to. The Golden Knights’ roster boasts six skaters with 20-plus regular-season goals, led by 37-goal man Pavel Dorofeyev and including Mark Stone (28), Jack Eichel (27), Tomas Hertl (24), Mitch Marner (24), and Ivan Barbashev (23). Through three games of this series so far, that group has combined for just five goals. Stone and Barbashev did some of the heavy lifting in the first two matchups, while Eichel finally got on the board Friday night, but the Golden Knights have yet to see Dorofeyev, Hertl, or Marner light the lamp. Hertl and Marner have one and two assists, respectively, but Dorofeyev has yet to produce a single point and has been on a journey up and down the lineup accordingly. On Friday, for example, he started the matchup on the second line and finished it on the fourth. He’s expected to suit up on the top line to start Monday.
Monday is pivotal for Vegas, not just because of the Grand Canyon-sized difference between being down 2-1 versus 3-1 in a series. It also marks a shift in Tortorella’s approach to line-mixing. He was relatively hands-off after taking over the team on the final sprint of the club’s stretch run to the playoffs, letting his players take the lead. But after insisting he liked a lot of what Vegas brought to the rink Friday night against Utah, he went home and put the lines in a blender for Sunday’s practice.
Among the adjustments heading into Monday’s matchup is Tortorella’s overhaul of the power-play groups — a move necessitated by the club’s stalling top unit over the past two games.
What started as a strength for the Golden Knights has quickly morphed into a giant question mark lingering over the club heading into Monday’s Game 4.
The team’s power play, which operated at a sixth-best success rate of 24.6 over the regular season, has been on a steady decline in this series as the Mammoth’s staunch penalty kill has won the battle thus far.
The club capitalized on its lone power-play opportunity in Game 1 — a Mark Stone marker that tied the matchup in the third and sparked Vegas’ comeback victory. Stone got another early in Game 2 on their first PP of the matchup, but in seven opportunities since then, including four Friday night, Vegas has been unable to cash in.
Asked about the adjustments, defenceman Noah Hanifin was confident in the group.
“I think it’s something different,” Hanifin said following the team’s optional morning skate. “Obviously, you never know what’ll happen, but special teams is huge in the playoffs, and sometimes just mixing things up a little bit can help.”
Among the changes made during Sunday’s practice was shifting Marner to the second power-play unit.
“Obviously, Mitch is real comfortable on that half wall — he’s been there his whole career, too,” Hanifin said. “So, for us, it’s just about moving around and really establishing shots and trying to throw some different looks at them.”
Shea Theodore, currently slated as QB1 on the top PP unit, agreed.
“I think just different looks. I think their PKs were pretty good, and I think we haven’t been generating enough,” he said. “So, just something to shake it up a little bit.”
Asked about the two-day break between games, both defencemen reiterated their coach’s sentiments — albeit, in a few more words.
“Anytime you get an opportunity to maybe rest a little bit more, you’ve got to take advantage of it,” said Hanifin.
The team, said Theodore, is champing at the bit to hit the ice.
“Obviously, a lot of us would’ve liked to have played yesterday, but here we are. We’re ready to go. We’ve watched a lot of tape, been here for a couple days, so we’re just ready to get at it.
“We’re excited to play tonight.”