Good habits – and good advice – ended Hertl’s slump and made him a Stanley Cup hero
RALEIGH – The image of Tomas Hertl, arms raised, converting a pretty give-and-go with Colton Sissons to score a game-winning goal in the Stanley Cup Final, felt like a distant desert mirage three and a half weeks ago.
Hertl was wading in the quicksand of a 29-game goal-scoring drought that stretched for the final 20 games of the regular season and the first nine of the postseason. Desperate to start contributing for his Vegas Golden Knights – a requirement for a two-time 30-goal scorer expected to be a power-play weapon – Hertl tried everything. As he told reporters after Vegas’ 5-4 road victory over the Carolina Hurricanes Tuesday night at Lenovo Center, he was watching YouTube videos of himself at the nadir of his slump in May, trying to understand what he was doing right when the pucks were going in. He tried talking to family members, too.
But it wasn’t until a call from an old friend and teammate that Hertl began to believe again. It was Joe Pavelski on the other end of the line. The two had played in a Stanley Cup Final together in 2015-16 with the San Jose Sharks, and Pavelski, who had 74 goals and 18 game-winners during the postseason across his 18-year career, gave Hertl the push he needed.
“I had like 30 minutes to talk with him, and he actually helped me a lot, because we’ve been pretty close and he’s a great goal scorer, been through a lot, and he called me and talked to me about just what to do,” Hertl told Daily Faceoff. “And I think [after] I was [talking] with him, the next day was the Anaheim game, and I scored [my] first goal, so it was really nice from him. And he’s still texting me. I appreciate it and obviously all the teammates always around me.”
Hertl ended the drought when he scored in Game 4 of Vegas’ second-round matchup with the Anaheim Ducks and has since found twine four times in eight games, including the game-winning goal in two of his past three.
“It wasn’t like I wasn’t getting chances,” Hertl said. “That’s when you start to worry, when you don’t have chances for a couple of games. But if your chances keep coming, you just try the same thing, and eventually it was kind of a lucky bounce and everything started.”
Hertl is 100 percent right that he was still getting good looks; in his scoreless nine games to open the playoffs, he actually led Vegas in 5-on-5 individual scoring chances per 60 minutes. That he was still dangerous bought him some rope with coach John Tortorella, at least for a while.
“We gave him some time. It took a little time,” Tortorella told Daily Faceoff Tuesday. “The time was getting short, though. And I do think Tommy, once he scored a goal, his game kind of changed. He was working at the other part of his game, but we just needed more from him. And he’s come through at a very important time and has given us some consistent minutes.”
The dam has broke, and his teammates couldn’t be happier.
“It’s been huge,” Sissons told Daily Faceoff Tuesday. “He’s such a big part of our offense, and I know it was hard on him for a while not chipping in, but he just worked through it, and he was getting the chances. They just weren’t going in for him. That’s the way this game goes sometimes. So I’m really happy for him, and we need it to continue throughout the series for sure.”
Hertl’s big moment finished off a back-and-forth night in which both teams sent the message to the other that the path of playoff dominance through three rounds was about to get much more difficult .
The Golden Knights were the first to get doused with a bucket of ice water. They were fresh off a sweep of the Presidents’ Trophy winning Colorado Avalanche, going 12-4 across the first three rounds of the playoffs, but the Hurricanes needed only 25 seconds to take the lead in Game 1 at Lenovo Center, with Ehlers finishing off a 2-on-1 with Jordan Martinook. It was all Carolina in that opening period, with the Canes tilting the ice as they have so consistently this postseason, overwhelming Vegas by a 10-2 margin in 5-on-5 scoring chances. Ehlers accepted a perfect stretch pass from blueliner Jalen Chatfield to make it 2-0 Carolina on a beautiful breakaway finish at 12:08 of the first.
The rout was on…until it wasn’t. It was time for the Canes, who’d breezed through their first three rounds by winning 12 of 13 games, to be humbled. William Karlsson narrowed the gap for Vegas before the first period was up. Ivan Barbashev returned the quick-blood favor to start period 2 with a bar-down snipe over Frederik Andersen’s right arm 30 seconds in. It was Vegas’ turn to play on its toes and intimidate; the Golden Knights reversed the flow to outchance the Canes 8-3 at 5-on-5 in the second and, after Brett Howden and Jordan Staal traded goals, the score was tied 3-3 after 40 minutes. And two teams who’ve spent the majority of this postseason bullying their opponents appeared to have met their equals.
Brett Howden buried his league-leading 11th of the playoffs to put Vegas up 4-3 on a lovely shot-pass from defenseman Shea Theodore just more than a minute until the third before Canes blueliner Shayne Gostisbehere answered with a blocker-side wrister past Carter Hart at the 11:19 mark. Hertl’s winner came with 3:24 left on the clock.
Game 1 might have felt like a surprisingly open, seesaw affair, and the Golden Knights seemed to be swimming upstream in that first period, but they didn’t panic, and their coach was confident they could fight back.
“Even when we were down 2-0, I thought we had some good minutes under our belt,” Tortorella said. “I think we need to be patient. In a number of things, how we have to play, I think it requires patience. And when you get a little antsy against that team, they can capitalize. They’re that good. So I think we have an understanding of how we have to go… But there’s some lessons in that game that we’re going to have to figure out when we come to Game 2.”
Patience. That’s a word Hertl understands as much as any Golden Knight right now. And his team, like him, was down but never out on Tuesday night in Raleigh.
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