The Vegas Golden Knights will try to finish off the Anaheim Ducks on Thursday at Honda Center without Mark Stone, Jeremy Lauzon and Brayden McNabb. Stone is out for a third straight game with a lower-body injury, Lauzon still has not played in the second round because of an upper-body ailment, and McNabb is serving a one-game suspension.
That leaves Vegas short-handed for Game 6 of its second-round Stanley Cup Playoff series, even with a 3-2 lead and a chance to end it in Anaheim. The Golden Knights moved Kaedan Korczak back into the lineup and are expected to pair him with Ben Hutton, while Shea Theodore shifts to the left side on the top pairing. Dylan Coghlan gets the chance on that top unit in just his fourth career playoff game.
McNabb’s absence comes after his hit on Anaheim center Ryan Poehling in Game 5, a swing point in a series that has already forced Vegas to keep adjusting. Stone had already sat out the previous two games before Thursday, leaving the Knights without one of their most reliable forwards as the series tightened. Lauzon’s continued absence has also trimmed the team’s depth on defense, making the lineup changes more important in the clincher.
There is also no waiting around for the next round. The Western Conference Final is set to open Wednesday in Denver regardless of how the Golden Knights-Ducks series ends, putting extra pressure on Vegas to settle matters now. If the Knights close it out, they will advance to the Western Conference Final for the fifth time in team history, another marker of how often this core has reached the sport’s late spring stage.
The test, then, is less about whether Vegas has enough skill to end the series than whether it can do it while missing three pieces it usually counts on. The Golden Knights have survived the first five games with the series still in hand. Thursday gives them one last chance to do it with the lineup stretched thinner than they would like.
They took it, defeating the Ducks in Game 6 in Anaheim and advancing to the Western Conference Final for the fifth time in team history.
