Golden Knights 'feel most comfortable' despite trailing in West 1st Round

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Vegas Golden Knights held a team dinner Saturday in Park City, the ski resort town about 40 minutes east of Salt Lake City. When they returned to practice at Delta Center on Sunday, they were up tempo and vocal with new lines and power-play units.

Yes, they have lost two straight to the Utah Mammoth in the Western Conference First Round, and they trail the best-of-7 series 2-1 entering Game 4 here Monday (9:30 p.m. ET; Utah16, SCRIPPS, ESPN, SN360, SN, TVAS, CBC), but they feel good about how they played in a 4-2 loss in Game 3 on Friday, and they're a veteran group that has been here before. 

In the first round last year, they lost two straight to the Minnesota Wild to fall behind in the series 2-1, then won three in a row to take it in six.

"I think they feel very comfortable in this situation," said Golden Knights coach John Tortorella, who took over March 29. "I think some guys almost relish this situation as far as trying to pull some people through. Yeah, so they've been that way since I've been here. It's a tight group, and I think it's very important that you're not uptight because of where you are in the series.

"And again, we're only down 2-1. I'm not going to make this doom or gloom, but you need to go the other way. I think you need to loosen yourself up, and I think we've got some personalities in there. I think we've got some great pros in there, that understand that. You need to have fun when you're going through this. If you're just so uptight … your game's just not going to go. I feel very comfortable with where the mind is with this group."

Tortorella showed the players video clips of what they did well in Game 3. The Golden Knights fell behind 4-0, and that was factor, but they outshot the Mammoth 32-12.

"We didn't give up much," captain Mark Stone said. "We were a lot better in the neutral zone last game, didn't give up much off the rush. I think in Games 1 and 2, they were flying through the neutral zone and really picking us apart. I thought we did a lot better job there.

"But I don't know. It's a results business, so you need to figure out things that you need to do better and for us, it's a little dirtier and scoring some more goals."

The Golden Knights have scored four goals and gone 1-for-8 on the power play over the past two games, staying on the outside too much 5-on-5 and with the man-advantage.

Tortorella shuffled things during Game 3 before shuffling them further Sunday.

Perhaps most notably, he dropped forward Pavel Dorofeyev from the second line to the fourth line during Game 3, then put him on the first line and first power-play unit Sunday.

Over the past two seasons, Dorofeyev has scored 72 goals in 164 games -- 16 more than anyone else for Vegas -- but only one goal in 11 playoff games. He has no points in this series.

One reason for putting him on the fourth line at least for part of a game was to get him to play more of a gritty, direct, playoff style, but the Golden Knights have a better chance to get him going on the first line with Ivan Barbashev and Jack Eichel.

"He's a scorer," Tortorella said. "He's one of the top players here. We need to try to help him. It's another guy that's been surrounded by a lot of good players. He understands what he is to the team. He understands what he needs to do to try to help us find our way."

Among the changes on the power play, Shea Theodore replaced Mitch Marner as the quarterback on the first unit and Marner moved to the flank on the second unit.

No matter how the power-play units look, Tortorella wants the Golden Knights to move the puck better, keep the Mammoth's penalty killers from setting up and get the puck to the net more often.

Mostly, though, he's looking at the big picture.

"You know what it is now?" Tortorella said. "It's belief. This isn't X's and O's. We've made some adjustments, as you do in playoffs. Not crazy stuff, but when you get down in a series and you lose a couple in a row, it's belief. It's believing in what we're doing, believing in how we're preparing. This is mental, and this is where I feel very comfortable with this team.

"I just talked to one player. I won't give you his name, but he says, 'This is when we feel most comfortable, when we're kind of backed up against the wall a little bit, and this is where it really comes out.' We draw as much stuff as we can on the board X's-and-O's-wise. This is belief, and I think we have that in that room."