You know Elvis Presley’s song “Viva Las Vegas?” If you’re a Utah Mammoth fan, you don’t want to hear that over the next two weeks.
That’s because the Vegas Golden Knights are the Mammoth’s first-round playoff opponent, and that is, fittingly, the Golden Knights’ win song.
The Golden Knights clinched the top spot in the Pacific Division with their 4-1 win Wednesday night against the Seattle Kraken. In their nine seasons of existence, this is their eighth playoff berth and their fifth division title.
Utah is 2-1-0 against Vegas this season. Over the course of those three games, they’ve outscored the Golden Knights 10-5, including Logan Cooley’s four-goal, five-point night at the Delta Center in November.
Defenseman Nate Schmidt is the lone Mammoth to have previously played for the Golden Knights. They selected him in the 2017 expansion draft, and together they reached the Stanley Cup Final that season.
Get to know the Vegas Golden Knights
Despite winning their division, things have not gone as smoothly for the Golden Knights as they’d planned this season — so much so that they fired head coach Bruce Cassidy with eight games left in the season, replacing him with John Tortorella.
Tortorella won the Stanley Cup as the head coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004. In February, he won Olympic gold as an assistant coach with Team USA.
When asked after Wednesday’s game whether he had any thoughts on the Mammoth, Tortorella, who’s known for his fiery nature, kept his answer simple: “No.”
Goaltending has been at the root of the Golden Knights’ problems this season. They’ve used four different goalies, and not one of them has a save percentage above .900.
That said, they’re loaded with talent up front and on defense. Jack Eichel and Noah Hanifin were both on the gold medal-winning American team in Milan, while Mitch Marner, Mark Stone and Shea Theodore all captured silver with Team Canada.
Adding the likes of Tomas Hertl, Pavel Dorofeyev and Rasmus Andersson into the mix, Vegas should be one of the top teams in the league.
Statistically, Utah and Vegas are close in a lot of areas. Here are a few relevant numbers from the regular season, along with where they rank league-wide.
| Utah Mammoth | Vegas Golden Knights | |
|---|---|---|
| Goals for | 265 (12th) | 264 (13th) |
| Goals against | 235 (6th) | 242 (12th) |
| Power play % | 20% (18th) | 24.6% (6th) |
| Penalty kill % | 78% (19th) | 81.4% (7th) |
| Giveaways | 1,298 (29th) | 1,292 (27th) |
| Takeaways | 351 (27th) | 363 (23rd) |
The schedule is not yet set, though reports surfaced Wednesday afternoon indicating that the only Saturday matchup in the Western Conference will be the Dallas Stars against the Minnesota Wild.
The other three series will be split between Sunday and Monday. T-Mobile Arena has a WWE event scheduled for Monday, so barring any changes, the teams will first face off on Sunday.