The Vegas Golden Knights are back in the Western Conference finals, and they have Mitch Marner to thank for it.
Marner, 29, had a goal and an assist to help Vegas eliminate the Anaheim Ducks with a 5-1 victory in Game 6 on Thursday night. After nine postseasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs in which he was labeled a playoff disappointment, Marner leads the Stanley Cup playoffs in scoring with 18 points in 12 games.
The Golden Knights move on to face the Colorado Avalanche in what will be Marner's first trip to the conference finals.
"Nothing in this sport can really be [about] one man," said Marner, who has scored more goals (seven) in this postseason than he scored in his past three postseasons with Toronto (six). "It feels great to be going onto the next round with this team. The work now really just keeps getting harder, and we're excited for it."
A few weeks before the regular season ended, it was unclear if the Golden Knights would even make the playoffs, let alone advance to the conference finals.
On March 29, they were 3-5-2 in their past 10 games and had the Los Angeles Kings and Seattle Kraken chasing them for a playoff berth. That's when Vegas fired head coach Bruce Cassidy, who led them to the Stanley Cup in 2023, and hired coach John Tortorella with eight games remaining in the regular season.
Marner said Tortorella's arrival gave the Golden Knights their "swagger" back at the most important time.
"I think we were maybe doubting ourselves about what we were doing out there," he said. "Sometimes that happens. And Torts came in and brought our swagger back to where it needed to be and playing the way that we wanted to play."
Tortorella went 7-0-1 to end the regular season. The Knights eliminated the Utah Mammoth and the Ducks in six games.
"Since that [coaching] change, I've really liked our game as a team," Marner said. "I think all of us have."
Tortorella declined to speak to the media after Thursday's clincher.
Marner got the Knights going in Game 6 with one of the most spectacular goals of the season. After William Karlsson sent a long pass to Marner, Ducks defenseman Jackson LaCombe tried to check the Vegas winger en route to the goal. Marner stopped at the top of the crease, drawing goalie Lukas Dostal (16 saves) to his right as LaCombe skated by them. Marner then brought the puck back through his legs and deposited it into the net for his seventh goal of the postseason.
"I just tried to make a move and Dostal had me covered, I thought, on the backhand," Marner said. "So I tried to do that move. Lucky enough, it worked out."
Marner set up the Knights' second goal while short-handed. With Cole Smith in the box for tripping, Marner calmly collected a loose puck in his defensive zone and skated with it down the ice, drawing the attention of two Anaheim players while Brett Howden moved near the crease. Marner fed him for a one-timer, and Howden scored his eighth of the playoffs.
Shea Theodore made it 3-0 on a power play at 17:19 of the first period. After Mikael Granlund finally got the Ducks on the board on a power play in the second period, Pavel Dorofeyev, who scored the OT winner in Game 4, scored his eighth of the playoffs and fourth goal of the series to make it 4-1.
Dorofeyev would score his ninth later in the period to ice it.
Thursday night's loss ended an impressive season for Anaheim. The Ducks made the playoffs for the first time since 2018 and advanced past the first round for the first time since 2017.
"Vegas got better every single game," Anaheim coach Joel Quenneville said. "They played very well. They checked well. They deserved to win."
The Golden Knights advanced to the playoffs' penultimate round for the fifth time in the franchise's ninth season. They'll take on Colorado, which is 8-1 in the postseason after finishing with the regular season's best record.
Said Marner: "We've got to take these couple days and try to refuel, refresh and be ready to go."
