How did the Golden Knights sweep the Avalanche?
The hockey world continues to reel from the stunning sweep of the Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference Final at the hands of the Vegas Golden Knights. While the Golden Knights certainly weren’t ruled out of the series, the Avalanche were still the slight favourites, so seeing the series be so one-sided was a shock.
But how did Vegas pull it off? What worked to cleanly dismantle the Presidents’ Trophy winners? Steve Peters joined Daily Faceoff Live on Sunday to break down what worked for Vegas in the sweep.
Steve Peters: I just got to say how well this Vegas Golden Knights team is defending. I remember we talked on this show a year ago and we talked about the Edmonton Oilers defending better as the playoffs went on. That’s what Vegas is doing.
This reminds me of the L.A. Kings back in 2012 where you go, “Hey, they’re not going to do very good. They’re going to get bumped out of this. They almost got beat by Utah, for goodness sakes. They’re not going anywhere.” And then they just got better and they got better. And the LA Kings were a wrecking ball through the playoffs.
And that’s what Vegas is doing. This is absolutely astounding what they’re doing defensively. So how are they doing it?
We talk about how well this team defends. They’re not allowing teams to get to the inside. They are so stingy in front of Carter Hart. They block, they have great sticks, there’s bodies in the lanes, and they don’t allow the best players of the Colorado Avalanche to get opportunities to the inside. Now, I know Carter Hart’s playing great, but they’re defending extremely well.
When you’re talking about players like MacKinnon, like Nelson, this is incredibly frustrating when you look up and you’ve got absolutely nowhere to move and you can’t get the puck to the blue paint. You can’t get the puck inside of the house. This is unbelievable defending right now. They’re blocking shots, pucks are hitting them. They’ve blocked 75 shots through the four games. They’re making it just a nightmare to try to generate offense.
This is against the best offense in the National Hockey League that they were able to do this. And their goals against continue to go down. In the first round versus Utah, it was 3.0. By the time they played against Colorado, their goals against per game was 1.75.
You can watch the full episode here…