Why should the following come as a surprise to anyone?
The Vegas Golden Knights advanced to the Stanley Cup Final Sunday night with a 2-1 win over the Winnipeg Jets in Game 5.
The Knights will represent the Western Conference as an inaugural NHL franchise.
“It means a lot to us,” Golden Knights defenseman Deryk Engelland said. “This is what you play for all season. After [the Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 58 and injured hundreds more] those first games … you want to play for the city, the people that were affected by it. To make this run, win this series, it’s awesome for us, but it all comes back to the city and the people affected by that.”
Alex Tuch score for the Knights and Ryan Reaves struck for the game-winner in the middle frame.
“The whole mentality of this team is next man up,” Reaves said. “We’ve got a deep team, we’ve got a lot of good players. You look at the season this team had even before I got here, everybody’s stepping up. The guys that weren’t playing, myself included, we stayed ready. We had fun while we were doing it, but we worked hard so when we were called upon we were ready to go.”
Marc-Andre Fleury made 31 saves to pick up the win.
“It’s insane. If you go back to the beginning of the season, your goal is always to make the playoffs,” Deryk Engelland said after the Knights won the conference title. “But if I were to guess I would be sitting here doing this right now, you would be a little skeptical at the time. But once we got rolling, we saw we have a team that can do some damage and a phenomenal goalie that’s going to stop everything. It’s been an amazing ride. We just want to keep it going now.”
Josh Morrissey scored the lone goal for the Jets.
“It was their time. They’re just playing really well. And you have to give them all the credit. Typically, in a seven-game series, the better team wins. Coming into it, I thought we had the best team,” Jets forward Blake Wheeler said. “I felt that way and obviously I’m a little bit biased, standing in this room feeling that we had a great opportunity. And that team just … it was their time. They made it really tough for us. We had to work for everything we got and even when we broke them down, we just couldn’t seem to ever gain the type of momentum we needed to get this thing on our terms.”
[WATCH: All Golden Knights vs. Jets highlights | Complete Jets vs. Golden Knights series coverage]
Connor Hellebuyck made 30 saves in the loss.
“I still think we did things right, got our chances,” Hellebuyck said. “Luck was on their side, definitely. I’ve never seen anything like it. Even their goals tonight were two tips. I don’t know. It’s tough to swallow.”
The Jets kept the series close on a game-by-game basis but Vegas was stingy on quality second chances and Fleury made the necessary saves.
“Throughout this whole thing until that buzzer blew tonight, I never thought we were out of it, never thought we wouldn’t find a way back into it,” Wheeler said. “It just seemed like every time we grabbed some momentum, they took it. So we can use whatever we want to do, but you have to give them a ton of credit for doing that. It’s the sign of a good team.”
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