Taking over a Vegas Golden Knights team whose season was quickly heading south, new head coach John Tortorella quickly stressed one major change.
Go north.
“Trying to get the right mindset, an aggressive mindset of playing north,” Tortorella said.
Tortorella, who replaced Bruce Cassidy as head coach on Sunday, has also emphasized wanting his team to pick up the pace while also playing a more direct, north-south game. That message seemed to come through in the latter half of a 4-2 victory over Vancouver in his coaching debut Monday, and was stressed even more in his first full practice Wednesday in preparation for Thursday night’s game with visiting Calgary (31-35-8, 70 points).
“Pace. We wanted to move the blood hard,” Tortorella said. “Today was a day we really wanted to push the pace.”
Tortorella, who said he spent much of Tuesday getting acclimated to his new office and planning ahead for the final seven games of the season, liked what he saw.
“Thought we had a good meeting this morning. Thought the practice was sharp,” Tortorella said. “Let’s go play a game and see where we go.”
Vegas (33-26-16, 82 points), which went just 5-9-2 in March, enters Thursday’s game three points behind second-place Edmonton in the Pacific Division in the battle for home ice in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Golden Knights, six points above the Western Conference playoff line, open a four-game road trip on Saturday against the Oilers in a key four-point swing game.
Thursday’s contest marks the first meeting since the Golden Knights acquired defenseman Rasmus Andersson in a January trade that sent popular defenseman Zach Whitecloud back to the Flames.
Tortorella was asked if he could tap into that emotional reunion to help build on Monday’s win.
“I don’t think we need anything to tap into,” Tortorella said. “With a veteran team, and where we’re at in the standings right now, we don’t need to tap into anything else other than worrying about ourselves, being ready to play, and taking each day at a time.”
Calgary, seventh in the Pacific Division, comes in off its most lopsided loss of the season, 9-2, at Colorado on Monday in the opening game of a six-game road trip.
The Flames, who are a league-worst 10-23-3 on the road this season, allowed 26 shots on goal while falling behind 5-0 in the first period. Dustin Wolf started in net and left after allowing four goals on 16 shots. Devin Cooley finished up and gave up five goals on 33 shots.
The loss snapped a six-game point streak for Calgary (5-0-1). With practices few and far between because of the NHL’s condensed schedule this season, the Flames were glad to get in a much-needed workout on Wednesday at T-Mobile Arena.
“Especially after a game like that,” defenseman Kevin Bahl said. “Get back to the fundamentals and work on little things like puck touches, things like that. We haven’t had a lot of time off to practice. The schedule has been crazy. We’ve had a game every other day.”
Forward Matvei Gridin was asked what lesson the team learned from Monday’s loss.
“Just to start on time, because we were kind of not ready to play,” he said. “Just start better than (the) Colorado (game) and build our game from that.”
It’s the final of four meetings between the teams. Vegas won the first two but the Flames, behind two goals and an assist from Mikael Backlund, won the last meeting, 6-3, on Dec. 20 in Calgary.
