I'm Getting Worried That The Vegas Golden Knights Are Never Going To Lose Again
Son of a mother hecking bitch. Let’s run this back real quick just so you can all understand the current mental space I’m working in at the moment. Here was my blog after Vegas won their round 1 opener against the LA Kings a couple of weeks ago.
It just didn’t feel right to me that a team playing in their 1st season in the NHL could come right out of the gates with a win in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. But I understood that they had home ice advantage. I understood there was probably a ton of adrenaline and emotion carrying them to that victory. So I got it. I didn’t like it, but I got it. However, things only got worse from there. And here’s where I was at mentally when it looked like the Golden Knights were well on their way to sweeping the Kings in their first ever playoff series.
As we all know at this point, the Golden Knights did go on to sweep the Kings. Looking back on it now, it was probably for the best considering beach season is quickly approaching so the vomiting it good for my figure. Gotta keep it tight, ya know? I knew you would. But that was all in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. That was just child’s play. Now we’re in the 2nd round. Where we separate the men from the boys. Naturally a team who was just pieced together this year couldn’t come out in the 2nd round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and have the same amount of success they had in the regular season and first round, right?
Dead wrong. The wrongest of wrongs there ever was. Because last night the Golden Knights came out and just 5 minutes into game 1 against the Sharks, they were already up to a 2-0 lead.
Just about a minute later, it was Jonathan Marchessault to make it 3-0 Knights.
Quick question here. Is there any team in the league that looks worse right now than the Florida Panthers? For starters, the fact that they left Jonathan Marchessault exposed at the Expansion Draft was an absolute joke. Everybody knew it was one of the dumber decisions that any GM had made heading into that Expansion Draft. So Vegas jumped at the opportunity, picked up Marchessault in the draft and then he only went on to have 75 points in 77 games this season.
And then you look behind the bench as well. Does everybody remember this photo?
The Florida Panthers fired Gerard Gallant in November 2016 after a road loss to the Hurricanes and made the guy find his own ride home from the game. This was the first moment that everybody should have realized that Tom Rowe has absolutely no idea what he’s doing and is just an egotistical maniac. Since firing Gerard Gallant, the Panthers haven’t made it to the playoffs. Meanwhile, Gallant is leading an expansion team playing in their inaugural season to a 5-0 record in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Not a big deal or anything. And speaking of Not A Big Deal… let’s talk about Alex Tuch real quick.
This right here is a goal that should be considered the dagger in this series. I know it was just over halfway through the first period of the first game of the series, but still. Alex Tuch has 4 Sharks in front of him. 5 if you count Martin Jones. And buddy just slices through all of them, stuffs the back of the net and that’s game over. The Golden Knights would go on to win this game 7-0. That is Marc-Andre Fleury’s 3rd shutout in 5 playoff games so far this year. The Vegas Golden Knights are now 5-0 in the playoffs in franchise history. It is absolutely sickening but absolutely incredible at the same time.