When the Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup in 2023, coach Bruce Cassidy used the phrase, “It Hurts To Win.” It was printed on T-shirts and the title of the team’s official championship book. On Tuesday, discussing the 3-1 hole his team now faces in its best-of-seven series with the Edmonton Oilers, Cassidy tweaked the expression.
“It’s hard to win. But if you start with one at home, a building we have typically played well in, it’s small picture right now. Take care of business Wednesday. Be ready to play. See if you can’t get a lead by playing the right way and having more urgency than them, more desperation,” said Cassidy. “That word now comes in to play because if we don’t win, we’re done. There needs to be a level of (desperation) without taking us out of our game. And go from there. We need to win one game three times in a row.”
The odds are long. It won’t be easy. But this core group of Golden Knights players have done a lot of amazing things together including winning the Stanley Cup. It’s easy to doubt them right now and hard to believe in them.
“It was a tie game with three minutes to go in Game 1 and Game 2 we lost in overtime and Game 3 we won. So there's three games in a row there that could have went our way. (Edmonton) could say that they could have had them all, right? That's playoff hockey,” said Cassidy. “In the Minnesota series, we tipped it in our direction. They were all close, so expect another close one Wednesday. Again, how do we get over the hump? In Game 2, we felt good enough to win. Well, we had a great start so, we got going. We were up 2-0 [in Game 1], but I don’t know that our game was fantastic. But at the end of the day, the start is going to be important. I thought in Game 3, we were just a better team. We were on top of them. We were faster, races and battles. You get down 3-1, there's no magic potion to sprinkle around the room. We're too far along as a team. There's a lot of guys in that room that have won. They understand what's at stake. We just have to play better, right? We just have to play harder. We have to play better for longer, and that's what's in front of us. That's a little bit of will right now, right? Do they want to do it? To play on or not? We're gonna find out fairly quickly.”
Cassidy is one of the winningest coaches in hockey. He’s been to the playoffs nine straight seasons. Been to the Final twice, winning with Vegas and losing a Game 7 with Boston. He’s not going down without a fight and he was clear about his plan for the next 24 hours.
“We're going to meet (Tuesday afternoon) and go through the game. The tenor we have to set is we have to do better in the first 10 minutes. It’s urgency and intensity out of the gate. I think that's a no brainer to be honest. If they need me to tell them that, we're in trouble,” he said. “So, that's where it's going to start. What I'm going to talk is about the dirty areas. We got to be better at them, so that will be the tactical part as we gave up two goals right in front of our net where pucks came from below the goal line to the front. We've got to kill those plays, be harder on the walls to begin with, or be better supporting when the puck does come to the front of the net. That's the start. We'll discuss our power play. I think they gave us some opportunities in certain areas that we didn't take advantage of. If we do get something early to give us juice, that's another area we could be better on. But the five-on-five game, that has to be better for us. It’s being harder on them in the slot, getting there and defending it. To me, that’s where it starts and ends. The rest of our game should be fine. We know how to play the game. We’ve been around a while. Our structure is typically when we have a lead where we tend to play well, so let's get the lead and how are we going to do that? Well, that's it, take care of the front of each net.”
Tuesday was a hard day for the Golden Knights and their fans. Being down 3-1 is a kick in the shins.
Who knows what Thursday will bring? But if there’s no belief on Wednesday, in the stands and on the ice, nothing positive can happen. One win. That’s where it starts. The margin for error is gone.
Winning the next three will be difficult. That’s an understatement. But imagine how good it would feel to accept the challenge and then meet it? This is why we’re here. As a city, a state, a fanbase and an organization. To accept the risks and live with the results. So hang in for one more day. And if that works, we’ll ask you for another.
