Golden Knights look to avenge Saturday's loss to Avalanche (Mar 26, 2018)
LAS VEGAS -- The Colorado Avalanche and Vegas Golden Knights will meet for the second time in three days when face off on Monday night at T-Mobile Arena. And depending on how things play out the next two weeks, they could be seeing plenty more of each other.
If the NHL season had ended on Sunday, Vegas would have been the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference playoffs and would be matched up with the seventh-seeded Avalanche in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Of course, there's a lot that can happen in the final two weeks of a very tightly contested playoff race.
"We're not going to get ahead of ourselves," Colorado captain Gabe Landeskog said when asked about the possibility of matching up with Vegas after scoring the game-winner in an entertaining 2-1 shootout victory over the Golden Knights on Saturday afternoon at the Pepsi Center. "We're not going to start looking ahead.
"We've got seven games left to polish things and ultimately gets wins and get points because we're going to need all of them at this point. So we're going to stay within the process like we talked about all season long."
Still, Saturday's contest, which featured an outstanding goaltending battle between Marc-Andre Fleury (29 saves) and Semyon Varlamov (39 saves), had a playoff intensity to it.
"I don't know about playoff preview but the game was a good game," Vegas coach Gerard Gallant said. "That wasn't a 1-1 hockey game. That was like a 5-4 hockey game. I thought both goalies did real good."
Colorado coach Jared Bednar agreed.
"It was a fun hockey game and I thought both teams played really well," Bednar said. "Back and forth, a little bit of everything. The goalies were really good. It was hard to create chances, but the game had really good pace to it. It was tight-checking, a fun hockey game. ... Both teams' players were really engaged."
It certainly was much more entertaining than the first time the teams met at T-Mobile Arena on Oct. 27. Vegas won that one, 7-0, with Varlamov stopping just 14 of the 21 shots he faced.
"We've been through some tough losses," Landeskog said after that one. "We're a different team this year. We're going to bounce back tomorrow."
And the Avs have. Colorado (41-26-8, 90) already has an amazing 42 more points than it finished with an NHL-worst 48 points and a dreadful 22-56-4 record.
Vegas (47-21-7, 101) will be out to get an "X" placed next to its name in the standings in the rematch with the Avs.
The contest kicks off a regular-season ending four-game homestand for the Golden Knights, who will also host Arizona, St. Louis and San Jose later in the week. Vegas ends the regular season with a three-game western Canada road trip to Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary.
