John Tortorella says he still feels funny saying “we” after taking over the Vegas Golden Knights, but by this point in the season he thinks it fits. Vegas opens the Western Conference First Round against the Utah Mammoth on Sunday, April 19, 2026, at T-Mobile Arena, and the coach who arrived on March 29 has spent eight games trying to make the language match the results.
The results were the reason for the change. When Tortorella was hired, Vegas had gone 8-15-4 over its previous 27 games and 1-4-2 in its previous seven, a slide that left the club in danger of missing the playoffs before it finished the regular season on a 7-0-1 run and won the Pacific Division. Mitch Marner said the shakeup served as a wake-up call. “We just knew that it was a bit of a wakeup call for everyone and knew that we needed to be better,” he said.
Tortorella said he did not want to sound as if he were claiming Cassidy’s group as his own too soon. Bruce Cassidy had won the Stanley Cup with many members of this roster in 2023, and Tortorella said that history made the pronouns feel loaded. “I’ve been here for eight games. I haven’t gone through the grind, the ups and downs of the regular season with them,” he said. But after more meetings, a few practices and some wins, he said he felt he could use the word now “in a very respectful way of the prior coach being here.” He added that “I think ‘we’ is very important at this time of year. I think the belief of ‘we’ is very important at this time of year, so I think I need to say it.”
That kind of reset is unusual even for a franchise that has made a habit of winning. The Golden Knights have reached the playoffs for the eighth time in nine seasons since entering the NHL as an expansion team, and general manager Kelly McCrimmon said the organization did not blink when it made the late-season move. “We are committed to winning,” he said. McCrimmon also said the club treats its players well and that he believes they value that approach.
On the ice, Mark Stone said Vegas did not overhaul its identity after the coaching change. “We didn’t change a ton of our systems, just a few places where we can be a little bit more aggressive, keep some pucks alive, whether it’s in the (offensive) zone, neutral zone or (defensive) zone,” he said. Stone added that the team tried to play quicker in the defensive zone, which he said led to more possession time. The bigger change, by the players’ own account, was urgency, not architecture.
That leaves Vegas entering the postseason with momentum and expectation in equal measure. The Knights rescued their regular season, but the test now is whether a late coaching switch and a late surge can carry into April, when the games stop leaving room for correction.
