Hockey: Peter DeBoer was speechless as he walked into the Vegas Golden Knights’ dressing room

Coach Peter DeBoer was speechless as he walked into the Vegas Golden Knights’ dressing room after Game 5 of the National Hockey League (NHL)’s Western Conference finals. DeBoer did not prepare something to say because he just did not think the team would lose. Lose the Golden Knights did. Dallas Stars forward Denis Gurianov’s goal at 3 minutes, 36 seconds of overtime gave his team a 3-2, come-from-behind victory and eliminated the Golden Knights from the postseason.

The Stars advanced to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 2000. The Golden Knights feel like this is a wasted opportunity. To win the Stanley Cup was the Golden Knights’ one goal. The Golden Knights did not want anything short of that, definitely feel defeated. The Golden Knights were first in the Pacific Division. The Golden Knights aggressively augmented their roster during the season, firing coach Gerard Gallant after a 24-19-6 start, hiring DeBoer, the coach who defeated them in Game 7 of last postseason’s opening round, and trading for Los Angeles Kings defenseman Alec Martinez and Chicago Blackhawks goalie Robin Lehner at the deadline.

The Golden Knights eliminated Chicago in five games in the quarterfinals, then outlasted the Vancouver Canucks, and the brilliant goaltending of Thatcher Demko in the last three games of the series with a Game 7 victory in the semifinals. The Golden Knights entered the Western Conference finals against the Stars as the odds-on favorites in the sportsbooks to win the Stanley Cup. The Golden Knights scored timely goals, it was a tight series.

The Golden Knights probably outplayed the Stars for 90 percent of it, but that is what cost the Golden Knights: the Golden Knights were not scoring, and the Stars were.

The last eight games felt like the Golden Knights were cursed around the net, nothing was going in. The Stars outscored the Golden Knights 9-8 in the series played in Edmonton, Alberta, as part of the league’s bubble amid the covid pandemic. In Game 5, Golden Knights center Chandler Stephenson scored at 8:14 of the first period on a breakaway for a 1-0 lead.

Reilly Smith snapped a shot high on Stars goaltender Anton Khudobin to give the Golden Knights a 2-0 lead 15 seconds into the third period. The Golden Knights were 10-2 in the playoffs when scoring the first goal. Between the regular season and the playoffs, the Golden Knights were 36-1-4 when leading after two periods. But the Stars started picking up the pace in the third period, and that effort manifested in Jamie Benn’s goal at 9:54.

Defenseman Esa Lindell passed the puck from behind the net, and it deflected off of winger Alexander Radulov and right to Benn, who snapped a wrist shot to cut the lead in half. The Stars tied the game with Golden Knights forward Alex Tuch in the penalty box for tripping. Defenseman John Klingberg got a shot through traffic, Lehner made the save, and Joel Kiviranta slapped home the rebound to tie the game at 16:13 of the third.

In overtime, the game turned on a crucial and unfortunate mistake from rookie defenseman Zach Whitecloud, who attempted to bat the puck away from a racing Stars forward and accidentally sent it over the glass for a delay-of-game penalty at 2:15. Gurianov scored the series clincher a few moments later. This is the Golden Knights’ second trip to the conference finals in three years of existence.

The Golden Knights lost to Washington Capitals in the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural season. Besides a few unrestricted free agents including Lehner, though it is expected that he will return, the Golden Knights’ roster could be intact for another run next season.

The goal of the Golden Knights is to win the Stanley Cup, it is the toughest trophy in hockey to win.

It is an unbelievably tough road, the Golden Knights have got to learn some things about what works in the playoffs and how to score in the playoffs. That is especially true for the Golden Knights’ top offensive players. The Stars received production from stars such as Benn, Radulov, and Joe Pavelski in the series. The same could not be said for the Golden Knights’ top scorers.

DeBoer noted one moment in the third period of Game 5 after the Stars cut the lead to 2-1 and Golden Knights forward and leading scorer Max Pacioretty could not convert a breakaway chance. It went beyond Pacioretty. Smith’s goal was his first in 11 games. Linemate Jonathan Marchessault was without a goal in that span. Mark Stone, who battled an injury in Game 5, had one goal in nine games.

The Golden Knights could never get that next goal to get out in front enough. In the end, that lack of timely scoring cost the Golden Knights their most important goal. The NHL changed its schedule with three games each set. The NHL looks to give out the 2020 Stanley Cup in spite of the covid pandemic. Commissioner Gary Bettman announced the NHL’s return-to-play strategy, which includes a 24-team playoff format involving 2 hub cities.

A lot of dates still need to be figured out, however there are key windows.

If the covid pandemic forces the NHL to pull the plug on playing games then only the 8 most affordable groups by inverse of their routine season points percentage would imply Arizona, Chicago, Columbus, Florida, Minnesota, Montreal, New York Rangers, and Winnipeg would remain in the running for the No. 1 pick. But there might be concerns about how the 2020 NHL playoffs will work. The league shared the competitive format for the 24-team playoff setup for how the 2020 NHL playoffs will work.

The qualifying round has previously been referred to as a play-in round. The remaining 8 groups in the qualifying round play best-of-five series to advance to the First Round. The winners from the qualifying round play the leading 4 seeds in the First Round. The round robin relate to the seeding for the leading 4 groups in each conference. The top 4 groups in the round robin play for First Round seeding.

Format and series lengths will be best-of-seven in First Round and Second Round. Toronto will host the Eastern Conference teams at Scotiabank Arena, while Edmonton will have the Western Conference teams at Rogers Place. In each Conference, groups are seeded by points portion. Best-of-7 series of Conference Finals and Stanley Cup Final will happen at Rogers Place in Edmonton.

After six hours, five overtimes, and a combined 151 shots on goal, the Tampa Bay Lightning won an epic Game 1 against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Brayden Point scored 150 minutes, 27 seconds into the contest to give the Lightning a 3-2 win. It was very special, the Lightning players were all exhausted. The Lightning players were all looking for a goal. When the Lightning players all saw that go in, it was a lot of emotion. And on the winning goal, Point saw a rolling puck coming to him, he just throw it on net, he was not even thinking.

It was the fourth-longest playoff game in NHL history. So long that the next game, originally was rescheduled. It takes arena workers roughly 90 minutes to disinfect the benches and clean the ice between games, including warm-ups. The Boston Bruins and the Carolina Hurricanes faced a start time typically reserved for beer leaguers. The Blue Jackets goaltender Joonas Korpisalo made 85 saves, a new NHL playoff record, topping the New York Islanders goaltender Kelly Hrudey’s previous mark of 73 saves, set in 1987.

The Blue Jackets blocked 62 shots in the game. The Lightning alone tallied 88 shots on goal, as many as the Rangers had combined in their three games against the Hurricanes in the qualification round. Hrudey was actually hoping that Korpisalo breaks the 100-save mark, and Hrudey was really hoping the game goes so long that Andrei Vasilevskiy breaks his record as well.

It is just an incredible performance, Hrudey has been waiting for this performance for 20-something years at least.

Vasilevskiy finished with 61 saves. The Blue Jackets defenseman Seth Jones also set a new NHL playoff record for ice time, skating in 65 minutes, 6 seconds, which beat Sergei Zubov’s old record of 63 minutes, 51 seconds, for the Stars in 2003. Jones even bested his father, former NBA player Popeye Jones, for minutes played in a game. Popeye Jones’ career high was 56 minutes in 1996 while with the Toronto Raptors, during a three-overtime loss to the Boston Celtics.

After the game, Jones feels fine but he took umbrage to the way the game was called. The officiating was kinda suspect to Jones. Every player on each team registered a shot on goal except for the Blue Jackets’ Cam Atkinson. Though Atkinson did have a breakaway opportunity shortly before Point scored. Atkinson crashed into the net after being chased down by a defender, but there was no penalty called on the play.

At one TV timeout in the fourth overtime period, the big screen in the fanless Scotiabank Arena announced it was time for a seventh-inning stretch. By the fifth overtime, a new message appeared, “Sorry if you had other plans tonight.” The Blue Jackets already had tired legs, playing their sixth game in nine days, including two that went to overtime. Players on both sides said the mental fatigue was as exhausting as the physical fatigue.

There is no way to prepare for a game that goes that long.

There is no reason to rain on the Toronto Blueshirts’ parade following the stunning NHL lottery victory in which the 12.5 percent chance the team had to land the first-overall pick in the entry draft turned into a 100 percent shot at adding projected franchise winger Alexis Lafreniere to a stable of upper-echelon up-and-comers with the first-overall pick. This was a stunner. The Edmonton Oilers has won 1 playoff round over these past 11 years, and that is with the player who might have the most complete offensive skill set in NHL history.

The Rangers somehow wound up 16th overall in 2005 when they entered the lottery as one of the four teams with the best odds of grabbing the No. 1 and the right to select Sidney Crosby. The NHL instituted a retroactive cap-recapture component to the collective bargaining agreement following the 2012-13 lockout meant to punish the Blueshirts for the front-loaded free-agent signing of Brad Richards. The Rangers are going to be able to add a big-time talent in Lafreniere, who in time should be an important piece of an NHL Stanley Cup contender.

The Blueshirts do not figure to be in that position next year and an attempt to short-circuit the rebuild process that is just two years old because of the result of the lottery drawing would be a terrible mistake. Rangers President John Davidson and general manager Jeff Gorton understand that there are no short cuts to becoming a perennial contender. That is the objective.

If the Rangers had just wanted to be a playoff team, there would have been no Letter in February 2018.

There is no doubt that adding a talent such as Lafreniere accelerates the process just as incorporating Adam Fox, Kaapo Kakko, Ryan Lindgren, and Igor Sheshterkin to the mix did this past season. But there is still heavy lifting to do to become a perennial contender. There is still final analysis to be done on the Rangers’ frightful performance in their three-game qualifying-round sweep by the Hurricanes.

Gorton and the deciders were placing a significant amount of weight on the Rangers’ performance under the NHL bubble as opposed to the work accomplished over the 37-28-5 regular season that ended March 2020. The Rangers is still trying to get through that one, but it is fairly significant. Even though it was three games, the way the Rangers lost, it has to consider a lot of things it could do differently as it moves forward to be a harder team to play against.

The Rangers is looking at that. The Rangers does not want to dismiss the 70 games and how far it came as a team and where it was prior to the pause. The Rangers was in a good spot, it was winning a lot of games, a lot of young men were doing a lot of good things, there were so many good things that were happening. The Rangers moved into 2020-21 essentially the moment the team received its eviction notice to leave the NHL bubble.

But, even with this lottery victory and the delicious prospect of adding the universally recognized top prospect to the mix, this offseason cannot be about 2020-21.

It has to be about 2021-22, 2022-23, and 2023-24. There are no short cuts to sustained success. The Pittsburgh Penguins with Marc-Andre Fleury No. 1 in 2003, Evgeni Malkin No. 2 in 2004, and Crosby first overall in 2005 did not make the playoffs until 2007. And it would be a dreadful mistake for the hierarchy to act otherwise. The Rangers has talents, and it has the first pick in the 2020 draft.

A very bright future indeed. But it is one that the Rangers must not mistake for next year. Lehner began 2 of the 3 games the Golden Knights played in round robin play. Although DeBoer has not called a starter for the series yet, it would appear Lehner will have the inside track to face his previous group when the playoffs begin. The Golden Knights, who went a best 3-0 in round robin play versus the other top 3 groups in the west, is a formidable team with strong goaltending, talented, and deep forward.

The Blackhawks made the most of their opportunities in the Oilers as they advanced into the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs. But now the road gets substantially harder as the Blackhawks will take on the top-seeded Golden Knights in the NHL Western Conference Quarterfinals. In terms of weaknesses, there is one essential area to watch on for Golden Knights, that is its penalty kill.

While the Oilers had among the very best penal eliminating units in the NHL this season, the Golden Knights had one of the worst, exterminating 80.8% of the power plays it faced.

Only one team still eligible for postseason contention had a worse charge kill than the Golden Knights, with the Toronto Maple Leafs still dealing with an eliminating game versus the Blue Jackets. That high level of engagement by the Maple Leafs develops a lot of chances for the team’s forward group, and it has one of the inmost groups of forwards in the NHL with gamers like Pacioretty, Stone, and William Karlsson all supplying ample scoring prowess to the team. On the protective side, the Golden Knights is a group with lots of depth and skill.

However, the Golden Knights is headlined by the players that can make plays take place on the offensive side of the ice. Nate Schmidt and Shea Theodore are 2 of the Golden Knights most efficient players offensively. Schmidt’s and Theodore’s capabilities to stretch the ice and keep pressure on opposing forwards can trigger even the most talented of team’s fits as they try to set up their offense.

The NHL is anticipated to release the preliminary schedule quickly, and the Blackhawks will likely once again get late-night billing from the league. Eventually, the Blackhawks do face an uphill climb versus the Golden Knights, who have actually been among the NHL’s most amazing stories throughout their short history in the league.