The Golden Knights' season ended Sunday with a 2-1 loss at the Dallas Stars in Game 7 of their first round playoff series.
Minutes after the defeat, a social media post reaffirmed the obvious: The Golden Knights' Stanley Cup title defense came up short. "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas... except for me. Thank you for all the memories, @GoldenKnights," a message posted to the official Stanley Cup account on X read.
This is the first time that Vegas has been eliminated from the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs since the 2019 season when it lost to San Jose in seven games. Last season, it reached the Stanley Cup Final for the second time in franchise history, and beat Florida for the championship.
"It wasn't enough, but here we are in game seven with one goal differential A third period, so I'm not going to sit here and criticize our guys all night," coach Bruce Cassidy said in the postgame news conference. "It's a tough team we're playing against and there's not a lot of room out there. I don't think you saw either team truly hit their max."
Brett Howden scored the Golden Knights' only goal of the game in the second period, crashing the net and tipping in a pass from Michael Amadio. It was his first goal of the playoffs.
The game was tied, 1-1, going into the third period before Dallas' Radek Faksa scored what ended up being the game-winning goal 44 seconds into the period.
"They made some adjustments that, I don't think we adjusted well enough right away," defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said. "That's on us as players to find a way up 2-0 to get the job done."
"We made mistakes along the way, but credit to them. They had a good season and good players."
Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger made 22 saves on 23 shots. Golden Knights goaltender Adin Hill made 22 saves on 24 shots, showing just how close the game was.
Dallas will face Colorado in the second round of the playoffs.
Golden Knights' adjustments off injuries made things difficult
The season was partially defined by how the Golden Knights were forced to play without key players because of injury. Cassidy said tonight that nine players had surgeries throughout the season.
Losing captain Mark Stone to a lacerated spleen, for example, was tough to overcome. Same with the others.
Those injuries, arguably, were why Vegas slipped to the No. 8 playoff seed to draw the Stars in the first round.
As the playoffs came back around, more players became healthy and were added to the lineup. However, that adjustment on the fly may have hurt Vegas in the end. The same could be said with not having home ice advantage.
"I give our guys a lot of credit. They played through a lot of injuries and trying to find chemistry with guys in and out," Cassidy said. "It took its toll eventually some of those surgeries."
"You're correcting a problem, but it takes a while to get back up to speed."
Stone returned in Game and recorded three goals over seven games in the series, but held a plus/minus of -2. Cassidy said after the game that William Karlsson was playing the entire series with a lower-body injury.
"We battled a ton of adversity and a lot of injuries again," Stone said. "Unfortunately, I had a hard time staying healthy without a lot of our top guys.
"We still found a way to get in the playoffs and we gave ourselves a chance to win the series."