Golden Knights captain warns teammates not to get complacent

Mark Stone raised his voice above the noise in the Golden Knights’ euphoric postgame locker room celebration Monday at Canada Life Centre.

The group cheered as left wing Brett Howden — clad in the customary Elvis wig and glasses for the player of the game — added a third winning puck to a Stanley Cup cutout that holds 16. But Stone didn’t want the Knights to think getting the next one will be easy, even after their 4-2 victory in Game 4 gave them a 3-1 lead in their first-round series with the Winnipeg Jets.

“It’s going to be the hardest one, boys,” Stone said. “Be ready.”

The Knights know that firsthand. They have taken a 3-1 lead in a series five times. They ended two in five games. The other three went to a Game 7. That’s a scenario they would like to avoid. They would much rather end the series Thursday at T-Mobile Arena and buy themselves some extra rest before the second round.

“We definitely don’t want to come back here,” defenseman Shea Theodore said Monday in Winnipeg. “It’s a pretty rowdy crowd. They get loud. They get us into it, but we want to close things out.”

The Knights have been in this position before.

Just like in the 2018 Western Conference Final, they have beaten the Jets three straight times after dropping Game 1. They ended that series in five games with a 2-1 win at Canada Life Centre.

The circumstances might be more favorable this time. The Knights will be at home for Game 5. They will face a Jets team without No. 1 defenseman Josh Morrissey, who won’t play the rest of the series because of a lower-body injury. Center Mark Scheifele, who led Winnipeg in goals in the regular season with 42, is a question mark.

Scheifele left 5:11 into Game 4 with an upper-body injury and didn’t return. Coach Rick Bowness did say Scheifele was feeling better Tuesday and didn’t rule him out for Game 5.

If Scheifele and left wing Nikolaj Ehlers, who has yet to appear in the series because of an upper-body injury, don’t play, the Jets will be without three of their top six scorers from the regular season.

“We all know they’ve got a couple injuries on their team,” left wing Ivan Barbashev said. “But it’s going to be up to us to push them out of the series.”

The Knights expect a challenge no matter what.

Despite their lead, there hasn’t been much separating the teams. High-danger scoring chances at five-on-five are tied at 33 apiece, according to the website Natural Stat Trick. The Knights have just been more opportunistic. They are outscoring Winnipeg 12-6 at five-on-five, which has made up for the Jets’ 5-2 edge on special teams.

“We had 65 shot attempts (in Game 4),” Bowness said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to get some of those to go in the net five-on-five. Five-on-five, the play is even.”

Winnipeg has shown it can win at T-Mobile Arena, as evidenced by its 5-1 victory in Game 1. The Jets can also take solace knowing that other teams have recovered from this position against the Knights.

Vancouver and Minnesota rallied from 3-1 deficits to force a Game 7 in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Both lost those games.

San Jose did advance despite being down 3-1 against the Knights in 2019, albeit in controversial fashion. The Sharks erased a 3-0, third-period deficit in Game 7 after a major penalty call on center Cody Eakin that later led to an NHL apology and an update to its replay rules.

The Knights don’t want to leave anything to chance this time. Not when they are one win from advancing to the second round for the fourth time in six years.

“The message for us is we haven’t won anything yet,” coach Bruce Cassidy said. “You need to win four, right?”

Contact Ben Gotz at bgotz@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BenSGotz on Twitter.