Golden Knights hoping home-ice magic swings series against Avalanche

By Justin Emerson

Friday, June 4, 2021 | 2 a.m.

There’s an adage in hockey, and sports in general — you aren’t in trouble until you lose at home.

The Golden Knights better hope that’s true. After starting their second-round series with two road losses to the Colorado Avalanche, Vegas returns to T-Mobile Arena for Games 3 and 4 in front of a capacity crowd for the first time in nearly 15 months.

They’ll have to win one of them in order to send the series back to Colorado, and both to avoid the dreaded 3-1 series deficit. That starts at 7 p.m. tonight in Game 3.

“The good news is we lost two here, now we go home to 18,000 fans and take care of home ice and come back here for Game 5 tied up,” captain Mark Stone said. “We’ve got to care of business in Vegas on Friday night.”

The last time fans attended a Golden Knights game without virus restrictions was March 3, 2020, a regular season game against the New Jersey Devils. Not only will the arena be at capacity, vaccinated fans won’t be required to wear a mask, officials said Tuesday.

The Golden Knights may need the 18,000 or so fans to help them get back in the series. Vegas was 21-5-2 at T-Mobile Arena this year, the fifth-best home record in the league, while Colorado was the best at 22-4-2. Vegas was 2-2 against the Avalanche at home in the regular season.

“Obviously they’ve got a great home record — they’ve got a good record too — but that’s a tough place to win,” coach Pete DeBoer said of Ball Arena in Denver. “For me it’s one game at a time. We’ve got to show up and win a game at home with our home crowd, which should be helpful and build on what we did in Game 2.”

DeBoer is intimately familiar with how hard it is for a visiting coach to win at T-Mobile Arena. He coached two series as Sharks coach before coming to the Golden Knights and went 2-4 in Las Vegas with San Jose. He said a rocking building can “absolutely” get in a visiting player’s head.

“As a visiting team when we got scored on, we talked about the ability of the atmosphere in the building to really create momentum for the home team and that we had to be able to handle that and a lot of times we didn’t and couldn’t,” he said. “Especially in those momentum moments, hopefully we can get a goal and get the crowd involved and build on it.”

A 2-0 deficit is something Vegas has not faced in nine previous series as a franchise. The Golden Knights lost Game 1 four times, but bounced back to win Game 2 every time. The loss on Wednesday put them in uncharted waters.

The numbers are not bullish on the chances of a comeback. William Hill has the Avalanche as a minus-700 favorite (betting $700 to win $100) to win the series, an implied probability of 87.5%. Hockey analytics sites are equally pessimistic — Moneypuck.com has Colorado with an 85.9% chance of winning and the Athletic has the Avalanche at 90%.

“I’m sure a lot of guys on our team have been there before, I’ve been there down 2-0, but it doesn’t matter,” goalie Marc-Andre Fleury said. “If we keep playing the way we did (in Game 2) I think we all have confidence in our team that we can come back in this series.”

These are two monumental games at T-Mobile Arena. Lose both and the series is over, a humbling sweep after a regular season so full of promise. Win one and the Golden Knights are still in a 3-1 hole, needing three straight against the Avalanche, two of which will be in Colorado.

Win both, though, and the Golden Knights are right back in this thing. They’ll get that chance tonight and at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, and they’ll do so in one of the rowdiest barns in the NHL, one that will be packed to the brim for the first time in more than a year.

“They held serve at home and we’ve got to do the same,” DeBoer said. “We’re planning on making it a long series.”