Tomas Hertl got ahold of it and fed Couture

WINNIPEG Jay Beagle Jersey Womens , Manitoba (AP) Gerard Gallant and Paul Maurice do not know each other well despite having their NHL coaching careers overlap for several years.The men behind the benches for the Vegas Golden Knights and Winnipeg Jets, though, both have led their teams into the Western Conference final after following long, winding paths.”It’s quite a story for both of them,” Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman said in a telephone interview.Gallant was fired by the Florida Panthers with a winning record just 21 games into the 2016-17 season, leaving him to catch a cab outside the arena in Raleigh, North Carolina, after his belongings were unloaded from the bus.Maurice was fired by the Carolina Hurricanes twice. The second time was after just 25 games of the 2011-12 season.They will match wits Wednesday night in Game 3 when Vegas hopes home ice gives it an advantage in the deadlocked series.Gallant was infamously relieved of his duties with the Panthers, a season after being a finalist for coach of the year, because of philosophical differences between analytics-minded management and the old-school coach.”He was left on the curb,” Golden Knights forward James Neal said.Vegas center Jonathan Marchessault was on the bus when news broke that Florida had fired its coach.”It was kind of out of nowhere,” he recalled.And it worked out very well for Gallant and a team that also came out of nowhere.The coach discarded by the Panthers has led a collection of castoffs to a stunningly successful expansion season.”It’s a perfect fit,” Marchessault said.If the straight-shooting coach can help Vegas win three more games, he’ll join Scotty Bowman as the only coaches to lead a first-year expansion team to the Stanley Cup final. Bowman did it 50 years ago with the St. Louis Blues, and the Hall of Famer is rooting for Gallant.”It’s a nice story because he deserved a better fate in Florida,” Bowman said. ”People felt bad for him the way it happened in Carolina. I know there were some teams thinking about hiring him before Vegas did.”Gallant won a career-high 51 games this season Curtis McKenzie Jersey Womens , his seventh in the league.Likewise, Maurice had his best season with what he said has been his best team. He won a career-high 52 games in his 20th year as an NHL coach. He’s three wins away from advancing to the Stanley Cup final for a second time. In 2002, the Bowman-led Red Wings beat Carolina and hoisted the Cup.Maurice broke into the league as a coach in 1995 with the Hartford Whalers, who moved to Carolina two years later. After he was fired the first time by the franchise, he lasted just two seasons and was 10 games over .500 in a pressure-cooker job with the Toronto Maple Leafs.Winnipeg hired him to lead its franchise with 35 games left in the 2013-14 season. The Jets were patient enough to let him guide a young team he took to the playoffs only once – without winning a game – before their breakout performance this season.When Winnipeg opened the postseason with a win over Minnesota, it was Maurice’s first victory in the playoffs since 2009 during his second stint with the Hurricanes. It reinforced a perspective he gained with two decades in the world’s top hockey league, knowing very well how hard it is to win in a league that may have more parity that any other in North American professional sports.”What I’ve learned – the short answer is – it’s special,” Maurice said.Maurice is as much of a student as a teacher, evolving as a communicator after having language barriers with players while coaching in Russia and learning to show perhaps 10 video clips to his players instead of 100 after coaching in the World Cup of Hockey.”He’s intense in games, but when we aren’t playing he’s pretty laid-back,” Winnipeg forward Andrew Copp said. ”He’s been in a pretty good mood, cracking some jokes in meetings lately. It shows his confidence in our team. It’s nice to have a coach behind the bench who doesn’t panic. He has an air of confidence and we carry that mentality, too.”— LAS VEGAS (AP) Two days after opening the second round with their worst game of the playoffs, the San Jose Sharks responded with a gritty performance.Logan Couture’s second goal of the game, on the power play at 5:13 of the second overtime, lifted the Sharks to a 4-3 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday night Nick Holden Jersey Womens , tying their Western Conference semifinal series at one game apiece.Moments after Vegas’ Jon Merrill was called for hooking, Couture found the back of the net to give the Sharks their first win inside T Mobile Arena this season.”I thought we were better everywhere,” Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said. ”We were tighter, our team game was better, we were better in every situation, and I knew we would be.”San Jose rallied from two goals down in the second period to take the lead, before Vegas tied it in the third.”We were down by two, but our game was good,” DeBoer said. ”Like I said going in, as long as our game is good – even if we lost tonight – I think we’ve always taken the approach that if we play our game, at the end of the day good things happen. We stuck with it and even when they scored the second goal I really liked how we were playing.”Vegas lost for the first time in the playoffs after winning their first five games by a 14-3 margin, including a 7-0 victory in Game 1.The Golden Knights thought they won this one in the first overtime when Jonathan Marchessault’s backhand sailed past Martin Jones with 3:02 left, but officials ruled there was goaltender interference when Marchessault ran into Jones’ blocker and spun him around before his shot.Per the NHL: ”After reviewing all available replays and consulting with the Referee, the Situation Room determined that contact between Vegas’ Jonathan Marchessault and Jones prevented him from his job, in accordance with Rule 78.7.”Brent Burns also scored two goals and Jones stopped 26 shots for San Jose, which was playing without suspended forward Evander Kane.”We fixed some things and it was a better team game Paul Stastny Jersey Womens ,” Burns said. ”It’s just one game, obviously we had to win it, but it’s one game.”William Karlsson scored twice for Vegas, while Nate Schmidt got his first of the postseason to tie the score at 3-3 with 6 1/2 minutes left in the third period. Marc-Andre Fleury finished with 43 saves.Game 3 is Monday night at San Jose.”We competed harder all over the ice,” Couture said. ”We were harder on pucks, we won more battles. I think when you’re creating offensive chances and you’re forcing other teams to play defensive hockey, that’s when penalties happen. They get tired and you wear them down.”Unlike the first game of this series, which saw the Golden Knights become the third NHL franchise to score at least seven goals in a playoff game during its inaugural season, Game 2 was much more physical, something that seemingly took Vegas out of its rhythm in the second period.In Game 1, Vegas blocked 26 shots, to the Sharks’ 13, but San Jose held a 36-26 edge in Game 2. And after being whistled for 10 penalties in first series-opener, as opposed to Vegas’ five, the Golden Knights found themselves in the box more than San Jose, 11-6.”I wasn’t too happy with a lot of it to be honest with you Max Pacioretty Jersey Womens ,” Vegas coach Gerard Gallant said. ”I think we had one penalty and they had seven, so I wasn’t too happy. They better be ready (for Game 3) because we didn’t show up for 45 minutes tonight. … We played a great game the other night and competed and battled. Tonight, whether we thought it was going to be easy or what we thought I don’t know, but we didn’t show up to play our game.”The Golden Knights got on the board late in the first period when Karlsson took a rebound off the end boards and found the back of the net from a tight angle. He notched his second goal when he took advantage of a turnover and beat Jones from the circle to put Vegas up 2-0 just 26 seconds into the second.Burns brought an end to the Sharks’ 82-minute scoring drought when he picked up the puck off the draw and blasted a slap shot from the point to cut Vegas’ lead in half.Couture tied the game at 2 with a goal that conceivably could have been avoided. After blocking a shot by Dylan Demelo, Fleury pushed the puck to Deryk Engelland behind the net, rather than covering it up. Tomas Hertl got ahold of it and fed Couture, who one-timed in with just under nine minutes left in the second.Three minutes later, Burns gave San Jose a 3-2 lead after he snagged the puck off a faceoff, circled the back of the net and tucked it in on a wraparound.NOTES: Burns’ second-period goal ended Fleury’s scoreless streak of 143:51, dating back to Game 3 of the opening round versus Los Angeles. … Vegas surpassed its season-high 13 penalties in minutes with 22 PIM. … The 18,671 in attendance was a new team record at T Mobile Arena. … Kane was suspended Friday because of a cross-check to the head of Pierre-Edouard Bellemare in Game 1. … It was the second straight series the Golden Knights went into double overtime in Game 2, with their opponent missing a key player due to suspension. Los Angeles was missing Drew Doughty in the opening round.