2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Complete Week 6 Roundup

Vegas Golden Knights VS Montreal Canadiens

Rest in peace, sweet West Division.

Yes, the West Division champs, the mighty Vegas Golden Knights, are done.

It’s a shame, isn’t it, Kings fans?

After winning four straight games against the Presidents’ Trophy champion Colorado Avalanche in the second round, the Golden Knights were supposed to steamroll the Montreal Canadiens, a team that finished 18th in the league standings in the regular season and was supposedly only in the final four because the North Division was terrible.

A lot of people were very sure about this.

The North may not have been the strongest division, but the whole “the North is a joke” narrative got seriously exaggerated. Montreal proved to be more than a worthy opponent for Vegas. Go ahead and continue dunking on the Toronto Maple Leafs for their latest playoff failure, but they won more games against the Canadiens than the Golden Knights did.

The Habs went into Vegas for a pivotal Game 5 and came away with an impressive 4-1 victory.

Despite Robin Lehner’s excellent Game 4 performance, head coach Pete DeBoer put Marc-Andre Fleury back in net for Game 5. Fleury allowed three goals on 25 shots in the loss, but he was hardly the Knights’ biggest problem. They were simply outplayed by a Canadiens team they were supposed to be far superior to.

Lehner was back in goal for Game 6 in Montreal. Alec Martinez scored his second goal of the series for Vegas to tie the game at 2-2 early in the third period.

That meant more overtime between these teams. All three games at Bell Centre in this series went to OT. This one didn’t last long, as Artturi Lehkonen buried a nice feed from Phillip Danault less than two minutes in to send the Canadiens to the Cup Final for the first time since 1993.

Whatever you think of the Golden Knights’ goaltending decisions in this series, it was really their offense that let them down. They didn’t score more than two goals in any of the series’ final five games. Their power play went 0-for-15 in the series. (The Habs have killed off 30 straight penalties dating back to Game 4 of their first-round series against the Maple Leafs.) Their top seven goal-scorers in the regular season — Max Pacioretty, Mark Stone, Jonathan Marchessault, Alex Tuch, William Karlsson, Chandler Stephenson, and Reilly Smith — combined for two goals in the series.

So much for nobody in the North Division knowing how to play defense.

Meanwhile, Canadiens rookie Cole Caufield broke out with four goals in the series, including this beauty from Game 6.

The Habs are the first Canadian team to play in the Stanley Cup Final since the 2010-11 Vancouver Canucks, and they’ll try to become the first Canadian team to win it since they did it in 1993.