LAS VEGAS -- The Golden Knights are Pacific Division champs, they'll host a Wild Card team starting Easter Sunday and barring a casualty in the first round, will host a second-round series, too.
The question is, with two road games left to close the regular season: "Now what?"
"I think, and I hate to say this, we're going to be okay no matter what happens with those two games," Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said after his team clinched the division with Saturday's 5-3 home win over the Nashville Predators. "Right now, it has been such a grind for a lot of these guys. You take some of the guys that had 4 Nations, some of the guys (with) the schedule lately. ... We're not going to take our foot off the gas, per se."
But, it could be time to manage the load.
After confirming Alex Pietrangelo's current status as an injury and not a load management, Cassidy might want to take a page out of the NBA playbook.
Pietrangelo and Hart Trophy-candidate Jack Eichel have missed a few games now, the Knights just got William Karlsson, Tomas Hertl and Shea Theodore back recently, and as he said, it's been a grind for many of his players.
Cassidy, an assistant coach for Team Canada during the 4 Nations Face-Off, said after the event he'd like to get some of the players who competed some time off, and the next week might be ample time for the Knights, who finish the season in Calgary and Vancouver this week.
The team was off Sunday and will practice Monday before boarding a flight to Calgary for Tuesday's game.
"The message will be, 'Hey, keep our details here, know what's around the corner,' and we'll probably try to implement a few things that may help us," Cassidy said. "We may have a better idea who our opponent is, too. There's an opportunity here to manipulate your team game a little bit, if there are areas you feel you need to work on. There are also areas to manipulate your lineup for individuals who may need rest."
Four candidates who could certainly use a breather are Pavel Dorofeyev, Noah Hanifin, Keegan Kolesar and Brayden McNabb, as they've appeared in all 80 games.
Cassidy acknowledged that by pulling skaters in and out of the lineup and changing lines can have an effect on team chemistry, and he wants to be careful in that aspect so it doesn't snowball into Sunday's playoff opener against what will likely be either the Minnesota Wild or St. Louis Blues.
"But I don't think two back-to-back games will do that, I really don't," Cassidy added. "We're a veteran enough group to know, 'Hey, you might be with this line, but your identity is this, and we'll reinforce that as we get closer to Sunday.'
"So that's how I'm looking at these two games. ... We have to seriously look at where is the health and the fatigue factor of a lot of our players, and how do we manage that to get us into Sunday feeling the best about ourselves."
Thus, Cassidy said he'll spend the next two days taking a serious look at the health and fatigue factor of a lot of his players, and how to manage that while getting the team into Sunday feeling as if they're at their best.
"This time of year you got to be playing your best hockey no matter who you're playing, what the situation is," Hanifin said. "We know what the end goal is for our team, and we got to be sharp, going into playoff time."
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