Imagine being in a coma for five years and waking up for the Vegas-Montreal game on Monday night. And after the game, we tell you that one of the two teams is aiming for the Stanley Cup and the other refuses to tell its fans that it aspires to participate in the playoffs.
Be honest, you could have answered that it is the CH which is aiming for the cup. Montreal ate Vegas.
Obviously, it’s no surprise that a bad team beats a good one. It happens.
What I have trouble understanding, however, is why Vegas can afford to aspire to great honors and that the CH is terrorized by the P-word to avoid getting carried away.
Well yes, they are strong Vegas. They are champions. They haven’t lost a game in regular time this year. It’s quite a machine.
But ignoring their successes in recent years, when we look at their training and that of the CH, are we really light years away?
A packed club?
Vegas had four first-round picks in uniform Monday night. The CH had nine.
Paul Cotter plays on the Golden Knights’ first line. He’s no worse, a big guy. But he has 26 points in his first 72 games in the NHL.
Chandler Stephenson skates like the wind and seems to be the greatest invention since sliced bread. But he still only had 33 points in 168 games with Washington before arriving in Nevada.
William Karlsson is an excellent center manager. But it’s been six years since he scored more than 60 points.
Mark Stone is so good. But he’s now 31 and he’s only played half-seasons for four years.
Ivan Barbashev was impressive in the playoffs last year. But this is a guy who had never scored more than 29 points before.
Brett Howden never scored more than 23 points.
Alec Martinez is solid, but he is now 36 years old.
Marchessault will soon be 33 years old and he has only one season of more than 60 points in his last five.
Yes, they have Alex Pietrangelo, Shea Theodore and Jack Eichel. But it’s like most teams that rely on a few big players.
Go ahead, compared player by player with the position by position alignment of both teams, who would you take?
To attack:
Stephenson or Suzuki? Caufield or Cotter? Harvey-Pinard or Stone? Newhook or Eichel? Slafkovsky or Barbashev? Anderson or Marchessault? Karlsson or Monahan? Pearson or Dorofeyev? Gallagher or Amadio? Evans or Howden? Pezzetta or Carrier? Armia or Kolesar?
To the defense:
Matheson or Martinez? Pietrangelo or Kovacevic? Guhle or McNabb? Theodore or Barron? Xhekaj or Hutton? Harris or Korczak?
I arrive at 10 for Vegas and 8 for Montreal.
Anyway, my point is that Vegas doesn’t have a packed club at all. It’s exceptional that they are so strong.
Arrange to win
They didn’t lower expectations after their victory last year by saying they were going to be younger, that there were going to be some holes in the lineup, that we had to be more patient. You have to manage to win, that’s all. I could write this same text talking about the Bruins this year.
That’s what makes the difference in my opinion. Paul Cotter may well have not broken anything in his early career, but in his mind, he is playing for the best club in the league. He has no excuses.
Chandler Stephenson didn’t change his skates and suddenly be strong when he arrived in Vegas four years ago. He started to have confidence and to tell himself that he was going to be an important player in a big club. He followed everyone who did that too.
It seems that there is never any question for this team of not aiming for the top. It could be a pee-wee player playing wing on their first line and I think the team would still believe it.
And surprisingly, they manage to be in the top almost all the time.
I suspect Martin St-Louis sees things like that too. Perhaps less the management which must manage the expectations of the public and not scrap its reconstruction to try to be better only during one season. But one thing is certain, the attitude in Vegas has something to inspire the CH. Aiming for a circuit is ambitious. But aiming not to swing in the butter is a bit of a loser.