Lawless: Time for VGK to Dig Deep

FORT LAUDERDALE - The Florida Panthers have officially become dangerous. From a Vegas Golden Knights perspective, it's time for the VGK to go to a place they've gone in every series this spring and find out if the Panthers can get there as well.

Vegas has shown a gear in every round to date this spring which their opponent could not match. They did it in Game 5 vs. Winnipeg, Game 6 vs. Edmonton and Game 6 vs. Dallas. They have yet to approach that level of execution in this Stanley Cup Final series.

Florida has finally gotten its act together and decided to play hockey. It resulted in a win in Game 3 and moved this series to 2-1 for the Golden Knights.

At the end of the season when a champion has been selected, no one will care how they made it happen. During a series, however, it is instructive to look inside.

Vegas has won two games and lost another while operating beneath their top game. Florida played its best game of the series in Game 3 and needed a dying seconds goalie out of their net score to force OT. Was it Florida's top end?

That's an unknown. Can Vegas get back to it's highest level? Can the Panthers match? Also unknown. But that's the mystery which will be unraveled as this series progresses.

Cassidy kept his players off the ice on Friday and said they wouldn't be "talking about the Florida Panthers," or looking at video. That would come Saturday morning. He planned to talk to the team from a 30,000-foot view. Vegas had won three straight games dating back to the Western Conference Final prior to Thursday night's loss. Cassidy, whose team is now 14-6 in the postseason, was asked about the state of his team's game.

"We're building towards it. We liked our game last night. It didn't work out for us. It could have gone either way, we were right there until the end. I found we played smart shutdown hockey in in the third period and tried to extend the lead. When you have the lead, you don't want to go into a shell," said Cassidy. "Be disciplined, take care of the puck, attacking when you can. We didn't finish those plays. They did with their goalie out. We'll give them credit, their first shot in overtime went in. I thought we were playing the right way. We had an opportunity on the power play and didn't get it done.

But if you go back the series, I go to Game 5 and 6 against Edmonton, I thought we were good late. Winnipeg, obviously we grew. Dallas, we had some good games at the start that could have gone either way. Games 3 and 6 were obviously good for us. And I think we've progressively got better. I think Game 2 in this series, pucks did go in. Yesterday we had some similar opportunities that didn't go in. It's gonna happen you're playing against a really good goaltender, good hockey team. So that's a little bit of how it goes and we're not going to beat ourselves up over yesterday's game. We're going to do what we always do and look at where we can get better. And keep growing our game and hopefully be better in Game 4 and know this is a time of year when you have to be better each game. And we've seen it now. Right? So has Florida. They've probably seen what their best game looks like. And I'd still like to think we do have another gear. We saw it in Dallas a little bit and somewhat in Edmonton. So I think our guys are familiar with it. And that's what's made us successful. I think we can get back to it quickly because we've seen what it looks like and that's going to be the challenge for us in Game 4."

Cassidy was asked about Game 6 vs. Dallas being the standard for his team to date and what it looked like.

"If you saw the game, i's exactly what your eyes saw. To be honest, I'm not trying to be simple, but we got an early lead. We're up three nothing in the first period. Very little time in our zone and we managed pucks through the neutral zone. We're in attack mode, created turnovers off the forecheck and had good discipline. There's just a lot of good habits on the offensive side of the puck, when to attack, and when to play behind them and defensively protect the middle of the ice," he said. "I think we gave up one early chance to (Roope) Hintz and after that we were pretty good at forcing them to react to what we were doing. And then we kept it going for 60 minutes. I don't think we ever truly gave them a chance to get back in the game. Every team has a push or they might have a small one. But we tempered that quickly. So it's always for us trying to get that 60 minute game and that was as close as we've been to it and so we would like to get back to that every night. I'm sure Florida has a game in their back pocket they refer to. I don't know which one it is but they are trying to get to that game and so that'll be the challenge for us."