Vegas Is Built For Springtime

The Vegas Golden Knights are a grudgingly acquired taste with one of the gristliest coaches in modern North American sport, but when they serve the meal as they did Tuesday night, you're eating it because the alternative is leaving hungry. Sweeping the battered Colorado Avalanche with a clinical 2-1 win puts them back into the Stanley Cup Final, and doing it the chesty and bullying way they did it, is very much a Vegas copyright. The NHL has a performatively polite veneer when someone in their midst succeeds, but it does so through gritted teeth when it comes to Las Vegas, and you will hear that reluctance for the next week while Montreal and Carolina sort out the right side of the bracket. To call in John Tortorella to add tacks to that sandpaper makes little sense until you see it in action and discover that it was the only thing to be done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiYsxEjAe7k Last night's closeout game didn't look particularly unique except that the Knights took the early lead after spotting the Avs the first period of the previous two. But once the games got legs, they played out the same way: with the Knights controlling play, space and time. They were healthier than Colorado, but injuries are not granted a high level of mitigation in hockey. It's a far more cynical and binary matter: If you're playing, you're healthy enough.