Golden Knights feel 'relief' after wild finish to Game 4 of Cup Final

SUNRISE, Fla. -- For the rest of the world, it was 17.4 seconds.

For the Vegas Golden Knights, it felt more like an eternity.

"It was painful," defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said.

Excruciatingly so.

Pietrangelo made those comments after the Golden Knights held off the Florida Panthers for a 3-2 victory in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final at FLA Live Arena on Saturday.

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With a 3-1 lead in the best-of-7 series and heading home with a chance to capture the first Stanley Cup championship in franchise history in Game 5 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET; TNT, truTV, CBC, SN, TVAS), you would think Pietrangelo's mood would have been one of glee in his postgame audience with the media.

Instead, he had the look of utter relief on his face, almost as though the weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

It's easy to understand why.

With the Panthers trailing by one goal and goalie Sergei Bobrovsky on the bench for an extra attacker, Florida had a 6-on-5 advantage in skaters and was making an extended push. With the play reaching a frenzied pitch, the Golden Knights defenseman inadvertently flipped the puck over the glass, resulting in an automatic delay-of-game penalty.

There were 17.4 seconds left in regulation -- the longest 17.4 ticks of the clock Vegas has ever experienced.

"It was no fun," Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said.

He pretty much spoke for the entire team.

"That's a tough one for 'Petro,'" Cassidy said. "He's just trying to do the right thing and get it around and clear it hard."

Pietrangelo went to the penalty box. The Panthers suddenly had a 6-on-4 advantage in skaters. The capacity pro-Florida crowd was going bonkers.

Would history repeat itself?

In Game 3, Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk scored the tying goal with 2:13 remaining in regulation and Bobrovsky pulled for an extra attacker. Again, Florida, which won that game 3-2 in overtime, seemed poised for more late-game heroics.

"We're lucky there were only [17.4] seconds left," Cassidy said. "OK, I said, 'Lucky.' (But) 'fortunate' is probably a better word. We were fortunate it wasn't the full two minutes."

Maybe. But it didn't make the final 17.4 ticks any less chaotic.

Forwards William Karlsson and Nicolas Roy, and defensemen Brayden McNabb and Zach Whitecloud were sent out to defend.

"Obviously, that was a battle until the last second," Roy said. "They pushed back there. They've been doing that the whole series, so it was nice to get that [win] for sure."

During the final seconds, it was pure shinny madness. Roy's stick broke. So did Whitecloud's. Tkachuk had a shot that goalie Adin Hll stopped with his pad just after the horn sounded. The scene was surreal.

"The last 17 seconds felt like time was flying by a million miles an hour, and obviously, no matter how much you tell yourself to stay calm it's tough," Whitecloud Video: VGK@FLA, Gm4: Hill stops Verhaeghe in final seconds for NHL.com. "When a stick breaks you try not to panic, and I think someone else's stick broke, too, I think (Nicolas) Roy's did. I didn't know that; I found out after."

Then came the horn.

"You trust the guys that are out there," Pietrangelo said. "And they came through."

And the feeling?

"Relief," he said. "Pure relief."