[SCF] Vegas Golden Knights (P1) vs. Florida Panthers (WC2) | Golden Knights win 2023 Stanley Cup

[Canuck You]

[Canuck You]

We've been waiting all our lives for a cup and this newish team just walks in and is like, This is easy.

[Baratheon]

3 hours ago, bishopshodan said:

I guess for some but I'm not seeing people acting like the end of the world. 

I dont like bad officiating. Period. 

As the playoffs get deeper the reffing should get better. More scrutiny and having the top guys call the game.

 

I love Sam Bennett and would like him on our team. However, he deserves to get called more for his tomfoolary, fo-sho.

 

Agreed.  Holding a high standard for refs is a good thing.  
 

It’s the more dramatic comments that I’m referring to.  Acting as though this is all part of some grand decades long conspiracy.  Or that Florida is being targeted in some kind of way and that’s why Vegas is winning.  
 

A bad call is a bad call but some posters are really taking the ball and running with it.

[mll]

30 minutes ago, EdgarM said:

I don't remember the exact number but I believe we had more PP's then they did. That's fine that we tried to get more PP's and hence better our chances of scoring but we did nothing to respond either on the score board or at least engage more physically. It's like someone told the team that they can't show any aggression at all. 

I say it was the Leadership, or the Coach, or both who knows.

33 opportunities for Vancouver.  2 goals and 3 short-handed goals against - ie a net -1 

27 opportunities for Boston - 5 goals and no short-handed goals against

 

[EdgarM]

12 minutes ago, mll said:

33 opportunities for Vancouver.  2 goals and 3 short-handed goals against - ie a net -1 

27 opportunities for Boston - 5 goals and no short-handed goals against

 

Ok thanks. Yeah I was totally expecting us to school them in the PP dept. Its like our PP could score at will it seemed. I remember the PP mostly playing on the perimeter we couldn't get anything into the front of the net. We made Thomas look like Patrick Roy he could see most of the shots. We didn't want to make the sacrifice and we expected to win playing at the same level as the regular season. The tighter checking nullified any chances that we did have.

[DownUndaCanuck]

1 hour ago, Canuck You said:

We've been waiting all our lives for a cup and this newish team just walks in and is like, This is easy.

Expansion draft was far too over-powered, they just created two perennial contenders in a heart-beat and both have fairly decent prospect pools so can keep this going for a long time. Nothing about Vegas or Seattle is organic to the way the rest of the teams are built - often in the NHL you have teams go through spells of doing well, then come crashing down as their core gets old, then they draft high picks and go back up the see-saw. Instead, these two expansion teams have solid depth up front because they have other team's 3rd liners as 4th liners, limited top-end star quality (when they drafted, anyway), of course good goaltending and solid deep forward groups - perfectly suited for the playoffs - not to mention good draft picks as well.

 

Teams should have been able to protect more players or...more interestingly...the expansion teams should have been only able to take a player per rostered line. For example, every team submits their lineup roster, gets to pick who to protect, and the expansion team picks one by one a player from the lineup one position/spot at a time. 

 

The reason Vegas and Seattle are just dominating is their depth and that's owed to the fact that they just picked a bunch of 2nd and 3rd liners instead of plugs.

[EdgarM]

25 minutes ago, Canuck You said:

We've been waiting all our lives for a cup and this newish team just walks in and is like, This is easy.

Get over it already, just accept watching a good hockey team how ever they were assembled. It's been 6 years and they have managed to do what we have been trying to do for over 50 years. 

They took some diamonds in the rough and made champions out of them. look at Hill, is he a product of some kind of conspiracy? Wasn't he traded for a 4th round pick or something?

Karlsson was a 20ish point guys who scored 43 goals in his first year with Vegas? I don't know if anyone would have predicted that. 

[chon derry]

11 minutes ago, EdgarM said:

Get over it already, just accept watching a good hockey team how ever they were assembled. It's been 6 years and they have managed to do what we have been trying to do for over 50 years. 

They took some diamonds in the rough and made champions out of them. look at Hill, is he a product of some kind of conspiracy? Wasn't he traded for a 4th round pick or something?

Karlsson was a 20ish point guys who scored 43 goals in his first year with Vegas? I don't know if anyone would have predicted that. 

It’s not like expansion teams haven’t had immediate success ,the very first expansion (6  teams  67/68 )  saw St. Louis get to the cup finals the first 3 seasons of their existence. 

[King Heffy]

31 minutes ago, chon derry said:

It’s not like expansion teams haven’t had immediate success ,the very first expansion (6  teams  67/68 )  saw St. Louis get to the cup finals the first 3 seasons of their existence. 

Even Florida made the final their third year.

[chon derry]

8 minutes ago, King Heffy said:

Even Florida made the final their third year.

5 years for the islanders to become the only team in NHL history to reach 5 consecutive cups. 

[Rick Blight]

14 minutes ago, chon derry said:

5 years for the islanders to become the only team in NHL history to reach 5 consecutive cups. 

 

 

Chon, I think you might be forgetting Montreal is the only team to have won 5 consecutive cups....1956/57/58/59/60.

 

 

[chon derry]

Just now, Rick Blight said:

 

 

Chon, I think you might be forgetting Montreal is the only team to have won 5 consecutive cups....1956/57/58/59/60.

 

 

My bad , well before my time. But we were talking expansion teams. But I never realized the Habs did it too. I’ve been listening to my islanders radical brother in law far to long.  

[Rick Blight]

1 minute ago, chon derry said:

My bad , well before my time. But we were talking expansion teams. But I never realized the Habs did it too. I’ve been listening to my islanders radical brother in law far to long.  

Unfortunately that was not well before my time.   The Islanders did not win 5 cups in a row but made it to the finals 5 consecutive years, losing to the Oilers in trying to match Montreal's record.

[Ballisticsports.]

7 hours ago, PhillipBlunt said:

Officials in this league are the worst in pro sports.

It's like the NHL takes the refs  from the WWF 

[bishopshodan]

The pretenders have beat better teams in this playoff run.

But, they haven't beat a better goalie.

Hill is on fire.

 

This year is really showing the importance of that position. 

[NewbieCanuckFan]

5 hours ago, Rick Blight said:

 

 

Chon, I think you might be forgetting Montreal is the only team to have won 5 consecutive cups....1956/57/58/59/60.

 

 

To be fair it was only a six team league then (heh, even less than the CFL).  *AND* it wasn't really 6 competative teams when you have the Norris family controlling directly or indirectly 4 of those 6 teams (they didn't call it "The Norris league" for nothing).

[Kevin Biestra]

8 hours ago, chon derry said:

It’s not like expansion teams haven’t had immediate success ,the very first expansion (6  teams  67/68 )  saw St. Louis get to the cup finals the first 3 seasons of their existence. 

 

During those first three years the league was set up so that one conference was all expansion teams and thus one HAD to make it to the final.  The original six were all in the other conference and that conference was only original six.  Again, it is another case of a particular expansion facilitating success (like the Seattle and Vegas ones) whereas all of the other expansions kind of left new teams to suffer as runts of the litter.

 

St. Louis was the best of the new six teams...somebody had to be.  If you take the 1968-69 season for example...all six teams in the original six conference were above .500 for the season.  Their last place team was over .500.  Meanwhile, St. Louis was the ONLY team that was over .500 in the expansion conference of six teams.  And that was because it played the other expansion teams so much.  Meanwhile the other five teams in the expansions conference got slapped around so much when they played the original six that they couldn't even manage a .500 record for the year by beating up on each other.  Four of the six teams had abysmal records...15 games below .500 or worse.

 

Edited June 8, 2023 by Kevin Biestra

[chon derry]

20 minutes ago, Kevin Biestra said:

 

During those first three years the league was set up so that one conference was all expansion teams and thus one HAD to make it to the final.  The original six were all in the other conference and that conference was only original six.  Again, it is another case of a particular expansion facilitating success (like Seattle and Vegas ones) whereas all of the other expansions kind of left new teams to suffer as runts of the litter.

 

St. Louis was the best of the new six teams...somebody had to be.  If you take the 1968-69 season for example...all six teams in the original six conference were above .500 for the season.  Their last place team was over .500.  Meanwhile, St. Louis was the ONLY team that was over .500 in the expansion conference of six teams.  And that was because it played the other expansion teams so much.  Meanwhile the other five teams in the expansions conference got slapped around so much when they played the original six that they couldn't even manage a .500 record for the year by beating up on each other.  Four of the six teams had abysmal records...15 games below .500 or more.

 

I read about the expansion on wiki. Here’s a quote.  Lol Oakland, predicted to finish first, fell far short of the mark, amidst poor attendance. Defenceman Kent Douglas, a former Calder Memorial Trophy winner, played far below expected form and was traded to Detroit for Ted Hampson and defenceman Bert Marshall. The Seals finished last in the West Division.p

[IBatch]

19 hours ago, EdgarM said:

You think so? The resiliency has been so overwhelming to this point. I keep waiting For Hill to have a bad game but he has been flawless since coming in relief of Brossoit.

With the forwards , its like its a different line that comes up big for the team at different times. Eichel and Stone are the stars but you have guys like Marchessault and Karlsson who find ways to score key goals at very key times in a game or series. 

Vancouver had a hard time beating San Jose in the first round! I think the teams resiliency and the ability to overcome advsersity are quite different.

Vancouver had a hard time, beating SJ in the Conference Finals, you mean, and that team was considered a contender for years, always good in the regular season, then couldn't get it done in the post season.   They were outplaying us as each game went to the next - SJ was the better team - thankfully Luongo was up to the task, and Bieksa made Eager go mental lol.   And of course his knuckle ball OT series clincher.    I was worried at the time, that if SJ won it,  there would be repeat of the CHI series (another contender, considering they'd just won the cup and all), but this time we'd lose.   SJ just got better and better with each game, we were going the other way.   Thornton was an absolute beast, best player both sides that series, we couldn't contain that line.   Series started out well for us.    But it for sure could have gone differently.   

 

Thankfully Bieksa was a total gamer all series, got us the penalties (Eager wanted to fight him because of course he destroyed Marleau - and then went ape-shit and cost his team the series) and that goal.    There were no easy outs or teams on the way to the final.   And the ride was awesome.  
 

As for Vegas.   They are too deep, and too well built for the playoffs to see them faltering or going flat.    With a much different team, we saw first hand how good they were in the bubble.   Dominated us.   Demko and Markstrom,  were the only reasons we made it to seven games.    This is a better team.    Florida showed they could play with them in game one.   Wouldn't say their odds are good,  sure hope they can at least make it a six game series. 

Edited June 8, 2023 by IBatch

[IBatch]

11 hours ago, bishopshodan said:

The pretenders have beat better teams in this playoff run.

But, they haven't beat a better goalie.

Hill is on fire.

 

This year is really showing the importance of that position. 

Was very impressed with Hill in the Dallas series.   Vegas was not the best team every game, and Hill was outplaying Otto.   Wasn't as lopsided as CAR/FLD, where Bobrovsky was doing his best Hasek or Patrick Roy impression... BUT right now, the real Patrick Roy is Hill.   He's doing what few goalies have ever accomplished, two that i'm aware of if they win the cup which for sure odds are they will now,  Dryden in 1970 winning when MTL wasn't supposed even make the playoffs, against the Big Bad Bruins etc, and Roy in 86 with MTL (that team was a contender though).     Bob got all the attention, but Hill wasn't that far behind really, and now it appears he's surpassing him.    As in goalies first playoff appearances, and just killing it all the way to the cup.  "Giraffe" Bruins named Dryden ... weren't happy about that.    Roy of course and Dryden did it as rookies.   Both top all-time goalies.   Hill is more like Tim Thomas.    

Edited June 8, 2023 by IBatch