FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. --It seemed like an offseason vacation, not the Stanley Cup Final.
The Vegas Golden Knights spent Friday at a luxury hotel across the street from the beach, the palm trees and the Atlantic Ocean, 35 minutes east of FLA Live Arena in Sunrise, Florida.
They didn't practice. They didn't even go to the rink. Coach Bruce Cassidy said in the morning they wouldn't look at video or discuss strategy when they held a brief team meeting later in the day.
Cassidy called it a "reset day," and the Golden Knights needed it physically and mentally to prepare to play the Florida Panthers in Game 4 on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; TNT, TBS, truTV, CBC, SN, TVAS).
Vegas leads the best-of-7 series 2-1.
"Basically, get away from the rink a little bit," Cassidy said. "It's hard. You're in the Stanley Cup Final. You're not going to be able to completely get away from it. But we're not going to talk Florida Panthers today with the guys. Let's save that for tomorrow."
These guys make millions of dollars to play a game for a living, and they receive first-class treatment -- charter flights, fine hotels, catered meals, fancy restaurants, the works. They are living the dream. It's fun.
"If you ask any guy, they love going on the road, just because you're together the whole time," defenseman Zach Whitecloud wrote in his blog for NHL.com. "You get to go for dinners and talk. You get to be with your buddies."
But for those of us who've never played in the NHL, it's hard to appreciate the pressure and the grind. The biggest prize in hockey is on the line, and there is a cumulative effect from the six months of the regular season and the two months of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Vegas played Game 3 of the series on Thursday, but it was Game 102 when you combine the 82-game regular season with the 20 games of the playoffs so far.
The Golden Knights were less than three minutes from taking a 3-0 series lead and lost 3-2, allowing the tying goal to forward Matthew Tkachuk at 17:47 of the third period and the winning goal to forward Carter Verhaeghe at 4:27 of overtime.
The game ended about 11:25 p.m. ET. The players went through their postgame routines and returned to the hotel. With their bodies on Pacific Time, full of emotion and adrenaline, they struggled to fall asleep.
"It was not easy to get down after that one," forward Michael Amadio said.
Amadio said he probably dozed off about 2 a.m. Center William Karlsson said it took him until about 3 or 3:30. Forward Keegan Kolesar said it was about 4 for him. Defenseman Brayden McNabb was unsure.
"Probably late, I guess," McNabb said.
Each of the four players looked bleary-eyed in a press conference in a hotel ballroom a little after 11 a.m.
Everyone has bumps and bruises this time of year, and many players are dealing with injuries we don't know about. Cassidy said the players would stretch and receive medical attention at the hotel.
"I think day to day and game to game, it depends how the game goes for your body," said McNabb, a 32-year-old in his 11th NHL season. "You're in such a routine playing every other day almost, so your body is used to that. You just do what you can to recover. Eat properly. Whatever is. Treatment. It's just that time of year."
A reset day is not the time to talk about the forecheck in the team meeting.
"We're not getting into X's and O's today," Cassidy said. "It's more about big picture, where we're at, and yes, we'll refer back. We'll use experience from this playoffs. But it won't be a long message."
The Golden Knights had a 2-1 series lead in each of the first two rounds. They defeated the Winnipeg Jets in five games in the Western Conference First Round and the Edmonton Oilers in six in the second.
They took a 3-0 lead against the Dallas Stars in the conference final, lost Games 4 and 5, then gave perhaps their best performance of the playoffs in a 6-0 win in Game 6.
Win Game 4 on Saturday, and they will take a commanding 3-1 series lead and have a chance to win the Cup at home in Game 5 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Lose, and the series will still be 2-2. They'll still have home-ice advantage.
So rest, reset, keep an even keel. Go to dinner, be with your buddies. Get some sleep and get ready for yet another one of the biggest games of your life.
"Well, if it was easy, everyone would do it, right?" Kolesar said with a little smile. "It's just the grind that comes with it. That's what makes it so rewarding at the end of the journey here, right?
"We've grinded all year, grinded through the playoffs, enjoyed every moment of it, and going to keep enjoying it. And that's what makes the victory so sweet, is you go through this grind, you know how hard it is, and you know the rewarding feel at the end of it."
