With 1:59 remaining in the third period of last night’s Stanley Cup Final against the Washington Capitals, Vegas Golden Knights right winger Alex Tuch appeared to have scored a dramatic game-tying goal to keep their hopes of a comeback win alive, or so fans inside and outside T-Mobile thought.
If you were out in the Toshiba Plaza or in The Park watching the game on the big screens, you were losing your mind. The “GOAL” graphic was flashing on the outside of T-Mobile Arena, people were screaming in celebration, embracing the person next to them with hugs and high fives. Everybody broke out into the traditional “GO KNIGHTS GO” chant. It was ecstasy, and not the kind you can easily find at EDC.
But that’s when reality cued Steve Harvey to bring us some bad news.
There was no goal, just an empty feeling in your gut that made people drop old and new four-letter words to take the sting away. The kind of internal, soul-devouring pain someone feels after being told they were going to be carrying the Olympic torch through their home city, only to be told their job is to actually run backwards, naked, through a dry cornfield.
How could this be? How did Vegas not score? Well, two reasons.
Reason No. 1 is simple. Caps goalie Braden Holtby’s glove and stick were in the right place at the right time. Don’t get me wrong. Was it an athletic move? Hell yes it was. Holtby’s bottom half was going one way while his top half was going the other. The New York Times quoted Washington Capitals center Jay Beagle, who said the stop was “The save of the year! Maybe the save of a lifetime.”
Former Capitals goaltender Olie Kolzig, took to twitter last night to rave about such an athletic play.
Greatest save I've ever seen!
— OlieKolzig (@OlieKolzig37) May 31, 2018
Hogwash.
It seems as if Olie Kolzig has selective memory, given how many great saves this league has seen over the past 100 years, but we’lll get into that later. Everybody just needs to slow down and take a breath for a minute. Let’s not all be prisoners of the moment. It always seems that the last thing we as sports fans see is “the best of all times.” Everything is “the greatest ever,” which is why arguments like this, or the MJ-LeBron debate is sadly humorous. Hyperbole to the extreme. He fell. His stick was down. Puck didn’t go in, plain and simple.
Reason No. 2 was Alex Tuch getting absolutely no elevation on the puck whatsoever. At best, the puck came two inches off the ice when it hit Holtby’s glove. Holtby was already in full extension before Tuch ever releases the puck off his stick. If the puck gets any type of elevation off Tuch’s stick, we are headed to overtime. Of course the bums in Washington felt it was something worth cheering for.
SAVE. OF. THE. YEAR! #ALLCAPS #StanleyCup pic.twitter.com/OCBBQoEPMI
— Washington Capitals (@Capitals) May 31, 2018
When you go back and watch the replay for the 56th time, as I have, you see certain factors, such as Cody Eakin’s beautiful pass to setup Tuch’s wrist shot. You can visibly see roughly 98 percent of the net is wide open. Then you see Alex Tuch put the puck in the tiny two percent of the net Holtby is actually protecting. This was a Tuch miss more than a Holtby save.
Greatest save you’ve ever seen? Greatest save of the season? The net was so wide open even Alex Ovechkin’s reaction was priceless! Ovechkin was sitting on the bench with his gloves covering his face trying to figure out how Tuch didn’t put it in the back of the net.
Holtby with a larcenous save, and Ovechkin's reaction is priceless 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/Q0JQYw4xOf
— Hockey Central (@HockeyCentraI) May 31, 2018
Either way, it didn’t go in and the series is knotted up at one game apiece. It’s a five-game series for a shot at glory and a place in hockey history forever. It’s just too bad some have to ruin a good moment with overstatement. I mean, it’s not even close to the show Golden Knights god Marc-Andre Fleury put on against the Winnipeg Jets late in Game 3 with the Knights up, 3-2.
As for better saves…well there is a long list. I don’t even have to go back that far to prove it wasn’t the best save of the year. Fleury’s robbery of Logan Couture in overtime against the San Jose Sharks in Game 3 of the second round. That glove save, which he made on his ass, that is what I call “the save of the year.”
Now we head east to Washington D.C. where the Knights will be looking to take home ice back with a road victory. The biggest in Knights history? No hyperbole here: The answer would be a resounding “yes!”
