LAS VEGAS — The Vegas Golden Knights dominated the opening minutes of Tuesday night’s Game 2 against the Minnesota Wild, firing shot after shot toward the Minnesota net from the opening puck drop.
After a few timely saves from goaltender Filip Gustavsson, star winger Kirill Kaprizov sent what his teammate Matt Boldy called “the best pass I’ve ever seen.”
The gorgeous saucer pass sprung Boldy on a breakaway. He finished the play by scoring his third goal of the series, and the Wild never looked back in the 5-2 win that evened the series 1-1 as it heads back to St. Paul.
That play was a microcosm of how the Wild were able to beat the heavily favored Golden Knights. Minnesota’s stars have made exceptional plays over the first two games, while Vegas’ stars have been uncharacteristically quiet.
The truth is, Kaprizov’s pass may not even be his best of these playoffs. Early in Game 1, he found Boldy for a backdoor score with an incredible shot fake that he feathered through multiple defenders onto Boldy’s tape. The Russian star, who missed more than half the regular season with an injury, has already racked up two goals and three assists in the first two games.
“They’re just unpredictable,” Golden Knights defenseman Noah Hanifin said of Kaprizov and Boldy. “They’re real creative and make a lot of east-to-west plays. They have high-skill players who read off each other well. It’s something we have to be better on them and harder on them, because they drive a lot of their offense.”
Meanwhile, the Golden Knights’ top line of Jack Eichel, Mark Stone and Ivan Barbashev has yet to record a single point. In Tuesday’s loss, Eichel was one of four Vegas players without a shot on goal.
“They’re elite, world-class players and they’ve got to get going,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said of his top line. “To me, there’s a little bit of, ‘Hey, you know what? The other team’s top guys are all over the (score) sheet. It’s time.’”
Eichel and Stone created chances in Game 1 — they each had a chance in alone with the goalie — they just didn’t convert. In Game 2, they were held in check by a tight-checking Wild squad that has been committed to staying above the puck and limiting their chances in transition.
“The line rush game, they’ve been real accountable to try to have people back against them,” Cassidy said. “You’re not getting your chances off the rush. You have to drive it deep and support it well.”
Eichel entered the playoffs in good form, having shattered his career-high 82 points with 94 this season. He’s a proven playoff performer, with a league-high 26 points in Vegas’ 2022-23 Stanley Cup championship run. He regularly outperformed the opponent’s top players on that run, and if the Golden Knights are going to take over this series the way they expect, they’re going to need Eichel back in that form.
“It’s early,” Cassidy said. “I have all the faith in the world in those guys.”
Part of the onus is on Eichel, Stone and Vegas’ other stars to elevate their offensive game and make the special plays with the puck everyone knows they’re capable of. The rest of the onus is on the Golden Knights as a team to make life more difficult on Minnesota’s stars. On Tuesday night, they fed the Wild’s transition offense with untimely giveaways that led directly to odd-man rushes.
“You’re giving their best players easy offense, and in the playoffs, that’s a bad formula,” Cassidy said. “You’re supposed to make it hard on them and see if they’ll battle through, and we didn’t.”
Vegas defenseman Shea Theodore made the biggest mistakes on Tuesday. He was on the ice for all four goals in the first two periods and turned the puck over, directly leading to several of them. He’s also coming off a career season with 57 points and will need to be better as the series progresses.
“He’s trying to do too much out there, it’s that simple,” Cassidy said of Theodore. “He was light on the puck tonight. What do you want me to say? He’s a great player for us. It wasn’t his night, and it snowballed. There’s a player trying to make amends, and I respect that. I like that. It didn’t go that way, and someone has to pick him up by putting out a fire.”
Cassidy and his players feel they didn’t make it hard enough on Minnesota’s stars, while the Wild defenders have done the opposite to Vegas’ top line.
“Their top line is frustrated a little bit, but they’re special players and they’re going to find ways,” Wild forward Marcus Foligno said. “We have to respect them, but not too much.”
Vegas’ other lines have played well. In particular, Tomas Hertl’s line has generated quite a bit of offense and scored again on Tuesday. The fourth line of Nicolas Roy, Brett Howden and Keegan Kolesar has been a matchup problem for Minnesota. Overall, the Golden Knights have outshot the Wild in both games and nearly doubled Minnesota in shots on Tuesday.
“Throughout the entire game, I thought we did a good job of controlling the pace,” Reilly Smith said. “It’s disheartening when you’re playing well, then they get a chance, they go and score. You control the next five minutes, then they go and score.”
And therein lies the difference in the game. Minnesota’s stars have made special plays to take advantage of even the tiniest of cracks in Vegas’ well-structured defense. Eichel and Stone are more than capable of doing the same, and will need to do it quickly as the series shifts to Minnesota for Game 3 on Thursday.
“I said it the other day and I believed it,” Cassidy said. “In the first part of the game, they were hungrier than us and more competitive. No one cares what we did two years ago. Nobody cares. They respect us for what we did, but they don’t care now. There are 16 teams that want the trophy, and they’re hungry.
“Some of our guys have to realize, we started Sunday. Get hungry. Get competitive. It’s not easy this time of year, and we’ll be fine. I believe that.”
(Photo: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
