RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – John Tortorella has never worried about how his Vegas Golden Knights handle tough situations in pushing to the Stanley Cup Final.
That won’t change now, with the Golden Knights facing their first elimination game and dealing with an injury to center William Karlsson.
The Golden Knights lost 4-2 to the Carolina Hurricanes in Thursday’s Game 5, moving the Hurricanes within a victory of claiming the Stanley Cup. The series shifts to Las Vegas for Sunday’s Game 6, with the Golden Knights aiming to force a Game 7 back here Wednesday.
“They’ve been through it all,” Tortorella said in a Zoom news conference Friday morning. “They know what’s at stake here. We need to win one game. They’ll be ready to play.”
Vegas – featuring numerous holdovers from the team that raised the Cup in 2023 – had only gained momentum since the abrupt firing of coach Bruce Cassidy in late March to hire Tortorella.
The Golden Knights won seven of eight to close the regular season. They faced 2-2 playoff series in Round 1 against Utah and Round 2 against Anaheim, and won Games 5 and 6 to close out each. They swept the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche. And they held a 2-1 lead on Carolina after a double-overtime victory in Game 3.
But the Hurricanes have gradually begun to turn the series.
Since trailing 4-0 entering the third period of Game 3, the Hurricanes have doubled up the Golden Knights (13-6) while finding a spark with Brandon Bussi taking over in net. In Game 5, the Hurricanes got two more power-play goals from a unit that had sputtered through the Eastern Conference playoffs while also reversing Vegas’ second-period dominance.
Vegas had compounding mistakes like getting a kill only for Brayden McNabb to immediately go to the box for cross-checking Jackson Blake in the second period. Or there was Mark Stone’s high stick on Jalen Chatfield in the third, leaving Chatfield bleeding from a cut above his right eye for a double-minor penalty.
Carolina’s Andrei Svechnikov scored after both, coming amid a postseason of questions as to when he and fellow top-liner Sebastian Aho would get rolling.
“Anytime you give the other team’s best players the opportunity to be on the ice on the power play and feel good about themselves … you stack that up and it definitely can be challenging and tire guys out,” center Nic Dowd said afterward.
Svechnikov’s scores pushed the Hurricanes to 6 of 16 (37.5%) on the power play this series, coming after they were at 12.5% (7 of 56) in a 12-1 push through the Eastern Conference playoffs.
“One of the areas that we’ve lost a little bit is special teams, a couple of power-play goals last night,” Tortorella said Friday. “Like I said after the game, I thought at times we were killing, we had some good times as far as moving, being aggressive with our penalty kill, and are doing the job. Other times, not so good.”
Then there’s Karlsson, who missed nearly six months with a lower-body injury before returning for his playoff debut to start the Anaheim series. He had three goals and six assists through 14 playoff games to elevate the Golden Knights, including goals in Games 1 and 4 against Carolina.
But Karlsson appeared to injure his left arm or shoulder after getting knocked into the boards by Hurricanes defenseman Sean Walker midway through the second. He got medical attention on the bench briefly, skated off and never returned.
Tortorella said Thursday that Karlsson was “not going to be with us, probably” and Vegas needed a collective effort to replace him. He offered no additional details Friday morning.
Still, he has defiantly promised the series would “be back here” for a Game 7.
“We know what we have to do to beat this team,” McNabb said Thursday night. “It’s a matter of going home and winning one game. That’s all it is, and hopefully we’re back here for Game 7.”
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