The Vegas Golden Knights can move into the NHL’s final four with a win over the Anaheim Ducks on Thursday night, a chance to turn a season that once looked lost into a ticket to the Western Conference Final. Puck drop is set for 6:30 p.m. at Honda Center.
Vegas was four points out of a wild-card spot on March 29, when coach Bruce Cassidy was fired and the season seemed to be slipping away. The team brought in John Tortorella, then closed the regular season 7-0-1, won the Pacific Division and put itself within one win of a fourth trip to the Western Conference Final in nine years.
The climb back was not linear. The Golden Knights went into the Christmas break at 17-8-10 and in first place in the Pacific after a 7-2 win over San Jose, then managed only one win in their next nine games and went 1-6-2 heading into a Jan. 6 game in Winnipeg. They beat the Jets 4-3 in overtime that night, and the result started a seven-game winning streak that briefly steadied the season.
That run included a Jan. 14 win over the Los Angeles Kings and a 6-5 overtime win over the Toronto Maple Leafs three days later. Three days after beating Toronto, Vegas traded for defenseman Rasmus Andersson from the Calgary Flames, a move meant to help a team trying to harden itself for the stretch run.
Andersson did not make his Golden Knights debut until Jan. 23 in Toronto, and what followed showed how much work was still ahead. Vegas lost seven of its next eight games after that debut, another jolt in a season that kept swinging between promise and trouble.
Andersson finished with 17 points in 33 games, a usable return for a player acquired to stabilize the blue line, but not enough on its own to smooth out the larger story of the year. The Golden Knights’ path to Thursday has been defined as much by those swings as by the late surge that put them on the brink of another deep playoff run.
Now the Ducks vs golden knights matchup carries more than just one game’s weight. A win ends the series and sends Vegas onward. A loss drags a season that has already included a coaching change, a major trade and a collapse-recovery rhythm back into uncertainty for at least one more night.
