“You’re going to lose.”
It was said with a smile. Well, sort of. But the 20-something kid in the Carolina Hurricanes sweatshirt wanted the middle-aged Vegas Golden Knights employee in a quarter-zip with the team logo on the chest to know what was coming.
Fair enough.
Don’t have to agree with it. Or the oddsmakers, who have the Hurricanes as favorites. Or the writers who haven’t seen a Vegas playoff game live but have still come up with theories as to why Carolina will win.
Conversely, if the purpose of this column was to persuade the reader that Vegas was going to win the Stanley Cup, it would be just as much nonsense.
No one knows. That’s what makes it so great. The unknown creates the tension. Otherwise, why would we even have the players play the games?
Carolina looked fantastic taking apart the Montreal Canadiens in the Eastern Conference Final. Vegas, in case you missed it, swept the President’s Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference Final.
Both teams deserve to be here, and both teams have a legitimate claim to their self-confidence.
But don’t discount luck and health at this time of the season. A careless high stick can change a series in five minutes. A goalie can steal a game. Or blow one.
No one knows what the future holds. Gambling isn’t called winning, and fishing isn’t called catching. Some things have to go the right way for a bettor to end up at the cashier cage with a smiling face. Some boats arrive back to shore with a packed live well. Other anglers get skunked.
I have had the incredible fortune of watching Jack Eichel play hockey for parts of five seasons. Included in that time is a Stanley Cup run, as well as two best-on-best international tournaments. From this perspective, he’s unique in his singular focus on winning. Eichel is tremendously skilled as a skater, shooter and passer. But it’s his hockey mind and how he applies it in order to help his team achieve victory that sets him apart from other elite players.
Eichel is the most impactful difference-maker in hockey at this moment. He makes Vegas dangerous. Am I biased? Of course. That’s what frequency and familiarity do. It’s fashionable to call the people who cover a team homers. There’s some truth to the accusation. But don’t discount the knowledge local writers and broadcasters collect regarding the teams they cover. They know their team. And in this case, I know a little about the Golden Knights.
It doesn’t mean they’ll win. As has been said here, there’s a lot that can happen. There are uncontrollable influences and external factors. And Eichel can’t and won’t do it alone. But he doesn’t have to try to win by himself. Mark Stone, Shea Theodore, Mitch Marner, Brayden McNabb, Pavel Dorofeyev, Ivan Barbashev, Noah Hanifin, Rasmus Andersson, Carter Hart, and lots more are on board to help.
Carolina folks are well within their rights to list off a host of excellent Hurricanes players and point to them as an argument for success. In fact, they have already done so.
Remember the kid in the Canes sweatshirt? He knows what he’s talking about, right?
Maybe, maybe not.
That’s why this is going to be so much fun.
I won’t make a prediction. It would be meaningless. Like all of them.
But I will leave you with one statement that has been borne out through three rounds of these playoffs.
No one knows how good the Vegas Golden Knights are right now. No one.
