Near elimination, Vegas' Tortorella vows Game 7

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Vegas Golden Knights coach John Tortorella vowed that the Stanley Cup Final would return to Raleigh for Game 7 after the Carolina Hurricanes pushed his team to the brink of elimination. "We'll be back here. We're just going to do it in a different order," Tortorella said after the Golden Knights' 4-2 loss in Game 5 on Thursday night, putting them down 3-2 in the series to the Hurricanes. "I'm going to leave my clothes here. That's for sure. They'll be in the hotel." Vegas will have to beat the odds if it is to rally for the Stanley Cup. The winner of Game 5 in a Cup Final tied at 2-2 has gone on win the series nearly 75% of the time. When a home team wins Game 5, as Carolina did Thursday night, that winning percentage increases to 80%. Teams that go up 3-2 in the Stanley Cup Final have a 37-8 series record and have won 10 straight series. Game 6 is Sunday night in Las Vegas. "We've done it the hard way all year, so why not do it again?" said Vegas defenseman Brayden McNabb, his nose stitched up from taking a puck to the face in Game 2. "We've got to win Game 6. That's the mindset." Center Jack Eichel called his team "a resilient group" and that the players' sole focus was preparing for Game 6 and "going home in a must-win situation." Determined as they are, there are some growing concerns for the Golden Knights, who lost consecutive contests for the first time since Games 2 and 3 in the first round against the Utah Mammoth. The most prominent one is the loss of key center William Karlsson. He took a hard hit from Carolina defenseman Sean Walker in the second period. After a trainer examined his left arm, Karlsson left the ice. ESPN's Emily Kaplan reported that Karlsson left the arena for evaluation and did not return for the third period. "He's not going to be with us, probably," Tortorella said. Vegas was 7-3-4 and 10-5 in the playoffs with Karlsson in the lineup. He has played on the Golden Knights' power play and their penalty kill, which gave up two power-play goals to Carolina's Andrei Svechnikov in Thursday's loss. The Golden Knights had to scramble their lines after his injury, including his linemate Mitch Marner getting time with Eichel's line. "He's day one guy. Been around a long time," McNabb said of Karlsson, one of the few remaining "Golden Misfits" from Vegas's expansion season in 2017-18. "He's a 200-foot player, so you definitely miss him when he's not in there." Another concern for Vegas: Their goaltending. Carter Hart became only the third goalie in NHL history to give up four-plus goals in each of the first five games of a Stanley Cup Final. He now has an .856 save percentage and a 3.70 goals-against average against Carolina. Tortorella shot down a question about whether he considered benching Hart for backup Adin Hill, who led the Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup in 2023 but struggled through an injury-plagued regular season. "Oh, Christ. That could be the stupidest question I've heard," the coach said. Finally, there's Carolina finding its form again. Game 5 was the first time either team was held to fewer than three goals. "It's the closest to a full 60 [minutes] that we've played in the last five games," said Carolina forward Nik Ehlers, who had three assists in the win. "And that's obviously a positive, but we've also got to realize how we played, how we did those things and how we need to play to give ourselves a chance because we're playing against a really good team." The Hurricanes played only one game more than the minimum required through three rounds, sweeping Ottawa and Philadelphia before finishing Montreal in five games. They had an 11-day break between the second and third rounds. Vegas needed six games to oust both Utah and Anaheim before their stunning sweep of the Colorado Avalanche in the conference final. In the war of attrition that is the Stanley Cup playoffs -- and in an increasingly brutal final round, in which the teams combined for 66 hits -- it's the Hurricanes that seem to be improving as the series deepens. "I hope we're getting better," coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "I think there's certain areas of our game that are starting to look a lot like we need it to look, but I do think there's still at another level that we're going to need to get to find that next one."