Hoooolllly shit what a win that was. 3-2 for our beautiful beasts. We are two wins away from making the finals, and six games away from partying like it’s 1999. Holy fuck.

.

After not scoring for essentially eight straight periods against Vegass, we erupted for three in essentially one period. First blood was a tale of two breakaways.

It starts with Karlsson catching a break for Vegass after we had been dominating in the o-zone. Fortunately, he choked.

Minutes later, Heiskanen and our Big Rig Jamie Oleksiak were pulled out to the blue line because apparently they go to man-to-man when Vegass activates their defensemen. Comeau picked up a blocked shot and passed to Miro. Next was a slick feed to the Big Rig for a breakaway that finished in the opposite form of Karlsson’s…

As a 14th overall pick in 2011, Oleksiak struggled throughout most of his career until two years ago when he was traded midseason to the Penguins. They taught him to stop sucking and un-busted him, and then by the grace of god traded him right back to us last year (for the same 4th rd pick they gave us for him).

The Big Rig has been an absolute beast for us defensively throughout the entire postseason, and now he has one of the biggest goals of the year. What a comeback story, what a player, and what a god damned goal!

.

The third period got intense as shit. One minute into it, Seguin had a beautiful chance for an early insurance goal but hit the tail end of Lehner’s stick…

Then we started brain farting on defense and gave up a 5v3, almost killed it, but ultimately gave up an equalizer.

The mood plummeted, but our beautiful captain made things right again three minutes later. After Eddie Olczyk had been begging us to shoot 5-hole the entire period before, Jamie Benn did just that after a sick fake-high-go-low…

From there on, our Russians took center stage. Dobby was sensational all night, but did give up a second equalizer after he got interfered and begged for a challenge. Unfortunately, the Toronto replay crew was too spineless to enforce the rules by the book and called it incidental.

Dobby apologized in the form of a stick bang and then transfigured himself into a brick wall for the rest of the game.

It was especially incredible considering the fact that he looked injured on one of his late leg splits and was noticeably slow getting up for the final five minutes of the game.

He didn’t have to move a muscle in overtime though, because our beautiful Russian forward did this 31 seconds in…

Sweet Jesus WHAT A FUCKING SHOT. Gooooooddd fucking lord that was so amazing.

Outside of Colorado Game 7, I thought Radulov had been sparing us to death for the past two weeks and honestly preferred Cogliano in the lineup instead of him. Never has a plate of crow tasted sweeter…

The Benn/Seguin/Rads line was broken up for a couple games until this one, and they got back to dominating as soon as they reunited. Two of the three goals came from this line, and they accounted for 2/3 of shots whenever they were on the ice. If this line fully activates again, this team gets even scarier good.

Oh and speaking of good… Heiskanen is so, so, soooo good.

After opening the series at -250 and being up to -280 before Game 3, Vegass is now slight underdogs. And we might’ve finally cracked the code on Lehner.

If we win tonight, shit gets really reeaalllll. Let’s. Fucking. Go.

The Knights came out more focused than us in Game 2 and the series is tied at one now. Sucks. It looks like we need some tactical adjustments going forward as Vegas looked way better with rest and Ryan Reaves back.

On the bright side, we got to rest Dobby for the 3rd period and Jake Oettinger looked pretty decent, which is a good sign for the future.

.

Enough about the game because it sucked. Now is a better time than any to discuss something that’s been really triggering me lately and that is the national anthem…

I’m not triggered by the fact that it’s disrespectful (which it is), and no I don’t care about the UCF Golden Knights either. The reason I’m triggered is that this chant is just plain fucking stupid.

The Stars have a way better chant where we yell “STARS” twice during the anthem. You see, ‘Stars’ in the Dallas Stars and the Star Spangled Banner are actual homonyms of each other. That is a chant to actually be proud of. In fact, it’s the only good anthem chant in America if you ask me.

Stars = Stars

Knights ≠ Night

Simple as that.

But even though our chant is the best, we don’t go around shoving it in everyone’s faces. Maybe we should start doing that now though with Vegass being all smug and obnoxious over the dumbest rendition ever.

Be better, Vegass. Be more like this.

In the Colorado series, the Stars had to go against their norm and push on offense to have a prayer of outscoring the high powered Avs. We didn’t necessarily race up and down the ice, but rather played high and aggressive with forechecking to bring the physicality to the offensive zone.

The result was five goal games in all four of our wins; a huge turnaround from the 2nd lowest scoring offense in the league during regular season.

.

In game 1 against Vegass, the Stars got back to our dominant defense and goaltending ways through a gritty 1-0 shutout. The neutral zone was clamped down shut, and if the Knights ever did find their way into the o-zone, the Dallas defensive bunker was impenetrable.

It’s hard to tell if we set out to use these tactics from the beginning or if the plan was to just lock down once we got a lead. The reason? Our goal came on our very first shot, just two and half minutes into the game…

Maybe we would’ve opened up more going forward if Vegass had ever equalized, but they didn’t. They didn’t even come close. Five total high danger scoring chances (including power plays) and zero total goals. It was a masterpiece.

.

A lot of people are pointing to the fact that the Knights were tired after playing back to back games 6 and 7 vs the Canucks. I’m sure that affected the game, but I have no sympathy.

Vegass gets a huge break all season by playing an easy schedule in the easiest division in hockey, while we have to grind it out in the hardest division every year. Also, don’t get pushed to seven games vs Vancouver if you don’t want to be tired.

.

When it comes to fatigue throughout the entire course of the series, Vegass should have the advantage. Mainly because of their goalie situation, as backup Theo Fleury looked very much like the Fleury that put the expansion team on his back and carried them to the finals two years ago.

Dobby was even better, as he stopped 100% of his shots and allowed ZERO rebound attempts.

In any given game, I’ll feel comfortable rolling with Dobby. However, he is a small goalie and depends on reflex skills that might wear down over a series.

I hope Bishop can snap out of whatever funk he’s in, or Vegass might get a leg up with fresh top-notch goalies. That’s why getting game 1 was so huge for us.

.

After taking out assistant captains early on in our first two series, we got right back at it and targeted Mark Stone…

This was the best hit of the game though…

Now to Vegass’s credit, none of their players are out for the series yet. Good for them for being tougher than the Flames and Avs. Still, it was quite nice to see a team that was so visibly cocky for two series before this end up looking tired, quiet, and scared all night on Sunday.

.

A couple other notes…

Heiskanen is so, so good. The Athletic’s Sean Shapiro just released a nice writeup on how his 21 year old play measures up to old legends in their primes.

One gif can’t do him justice, but there’s so many things like this that he makes look so easy. It doesn’t show up in the box score, but he’s already breaking records in that aspect anyway.

.

The Avs were cheating against us all last series. It looks like Vegass won’t be able to and that might be huge. Finally, interference is being called again…

.

We win three out of six and we’re in the finals. Game 2 tonight. Let’s fucking go.

Show of hands from all my readers and be honest here y’all… Who among us has ever actually enjoyed a trip to Vegas?

Ohh hmm for some reason I don’t see any hands just like every other time I’ve ever asked this question. It’s almost like VegASS is the most overrated city in the world.

Apparently they have the most overrated hockey team in the world too because the Knights are -250 to beat us in the conference finals. I’m starting to sound like a broken record here but… what the fuck Vegas?

I understand that Vegas teams get inflated odds because of all the local tickets. And yes, this is still better odds than they gave us for the Avs. But it is still insulting and I’m having none of it.

.

The Avs were the best team in the league and I still thought their price was way too high going into that series. I was proven more than right when we nearly gentleman sweep’d em before accidentally forfeiting that game 5.

The Knights on the other hand just barely escaped a seven game series against the freakin Canucks. “Yeah but they murdered the advanced stats etc etc.” Oh, great… What an accomplishment dominating possession against the freaking VANCOUVER CANUCKS.

Vancouver has been one of the worst teams in hockey over the past several seasons, with some slight improvement this year due to a weighted schedule against the easiest division opponents by far. Vegas gets the same benefit by the way.

There are five, possibly six teams in the Central division that could win the Pacific easily. Remember last year when everyone thought Calgary was good? Haha, that was funny.

.

The biggest hurdle to the finals was Colorado and we just cleared that with flying colors. Making us heavy underdogs to the west coast teams is absolutely disrespectful and for the third straight time this postseason, we’re gonna have to make bookies regret it.

Fuck Vegas. Fuck their bookies. And fuck their shitty expansion team.

Stars in 6