WASHINGTON, DC – The Vegas Golden Knights entered the Stanley Cup Final as the prohibitive favorite after mowing down the opposition in the Western Conference Playoffs.
The three series in the west were repre4sentative of the regular season where intimidation was a factor in each series win.
So far in the Final, the Washington Capitals have not been intimidated by the Knights or their regular season successes.
On Monday night, the Caps stretched their series lead to 3-1 off a 6-2 win in Game 4; Evgeny Kuznetsov picked up four assists in the win.
“There’s been heartbreak here, we know that,” T.J. Oshie said after the win. “But I think that has kind of scarred over and has made us a little stronger for it. We’ll just keep pressing on, keep working and try to do something pretty cool here.”
Oshie had a goal in the victory and Tom Wilson, Devante Smith-Pelly, John Carlson, Michal Kempny and Brett Connolly also struck for goals.
“Obviously, it can be easy in a game where you can clinch to get a little bit of ahead of ourselves, but we’ve got a good group of leaders in the room and some young guys who have jumped on board,” Oshie said. “We’ll be focused at the start.”
Braden Holtby made 28 saves to get the win.
The Caps had a 4-0 lead before the Knights got on the board with two goals.
“I was disappointed we were down 3-0, our players were disappointed,” Vegas head coach Gerard Gallant said. “The message was, ‘Let’s play the same way and let’s see what happens,’ because everybody liked our [first] period.”
Vegas cut the deficit to 4-2 before the Caps struck back with two goals.
“They had six goals, they had three power-play goals and made some real nice plays, but we played a lot of the game the way we wanted to play,” Gallant said.
Washington scored three of their goals off the power play.
“We haven’t been getting too high or too low whether the other team scores, we score, we win or they win. We’ve been pretty level-headed through this whole thing. Seems like everyone is just really excited to go out for their next shift and get the job done. So we’ll take that same approach [in Game 5],”Oshie said.
[WATCH: All Golden Knights vs. Capitals highlights | Complete Golden Knights vs. Capitals series coverage]
Marc-Andre Fleury made 17 saves in taking the loss.
“No feeling sorry for ourselves. We’ll figure it out and we’ll win a game at home,” Neal said after the game.
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