The desert heat in Las Vegas is expected to boil Fahrenheit thermometers into the triple digits by Wednesday.
That doesn’t bother Washington Capitals forward Brett Connolly. It will be cool at ice level at T-Mobile Arena where Connolly and the Capitals are hatching a plan they think will put the chill into Vegas Golden Knights.
Heading into the month of June, there are just two teams left standing in the NHL and one of them will walk off with the Stanley Cup. The Caps arrived in Vegas Saturday afternoon, after a morning practice in Washington packed with 6,000 fans. Connolly got his first taste of the Vegas entertainment spectacle when Washington played there in December and the hype has been cranked up considerably now that the expansion Golden Knights are in the Cup final.
“It’s incredible, they’re putting on quite a show and I can only imagine what they’re planning for the finals,” Connolly said prior to Monday night’s opening game. “There’s quite a buzz around the city and it’s just going to be something you really have to enjoy and take advantage of because these opportunities are not going to come every year, so when you get them you have to do your best.
“Now I’m in the final and we’re four wins away from bringing a Stanley Cup to Prince George and we’re going to give it our best shot here. We’re going to win this thing.”
Game 1 went in favour of the Golden Knights, who prevailed 6-4. Connolly scored the Capitals’ first goal – his fifth of the playoffs – at 14:41 of the first period, a deflection that tied the game 1-1.
Connolly is now in his second season playing for Washington, and head coach Barry Trotz made it clear to him soon after he joined the Capitals in the summer of 2016 he didn’t expect the former Prince George Cougar to be the scoring superstar he was in the Western Hockey League and gave him a different role. He’s found his niche on the third line at right wing playing with Lars Eller and Andre Burakovsky and through 20 playoff games Connolly has five goals and two assists, after a 15-goal, 27-point regular season. He scored twice in the six-game second-round series with Pittsburgh and connected for two goals and an assist as the Caps rallied from a 3-2 deficit to beat the Tampa Bay Lightning in seven games in the Eastern Conference final.
“The whole system here really suits my style of play – we’re playing fast, and offensively we’re allowed to do whatever we want and Barry’s been good, not being too hard on guys when they make mistakes and just making sure you’re not making the same mistakes over and over,” Connolly said.
“I’ve found a really good comfort zone with this group, it’s such a good group of guys. It’s been the turning point of my career here and it feels good when you can get to that other side when things don’t go your way at a young age.
“You have to have a thick skin and believe in yourself and I’m happy I stuck with it and kept grinding away at it. I focused on being more physical and playing harder and these last two years I’ve found a way to score a little bit and consistently score with the bottom-six role I’ve had on this team. I still have more in me, I know that, and I’m on the right path, I just have to stick with it.”
Connolly entered the NHL as Tampa Bay’s first-round pick in 2010, chosen sixth overall. Defenceman Eric Brewer is the only other Prince George Cougar who went higher in the draft order, taken fifth overall by the New York Islanders in 1997.
Connolly was bothered by injuries which limited him to just 16 games with the Cougars in 2009-10, his draft year, but he came back with a solid 46-goal, 73-point season as an 18-year-old and made the jump to the Lightning the following season, finishing with four goals and 15 points in 68 games.
“I was a young kid who made the NHL at 19 years old, I never thought I would make the team out of training camp and I had a lot to learn away from the rink and at the rink, just a lot of maturity that I had to find,” he said.
“My game just kept evolving and I tried to stay confident but there were definitely dark days. I had to work at the defensive side of the game and that’s where I struggled. When I was playing in Prince George I didn’t play a whole lot of defence, it was all offence. I was a young kid who excelled in the Western Hockey League and you go to the NHL and you need to play all over the ice and be good in all areas unless you’re scoring 50 goals a year, which I wasn’t.”
Connolly spent most of his time the next two seasons in the AHL with the Bolts’ farm team in Syracuse and came back to play 50 games for the Lightning before he was traded to Boston for a pair of second-round draft picks. In 2014-15 he scored nine goals and had 25 points in 71 games with the Bruins but Boston didn’t put up a qualifying offer that summer and he became a free agent.
The Capitals signed him for a bargain-basement $850,000 one-year deal and last June, after reaching a career-high 15 goals, he signed a two-year $3 million extension. After six years of struggling in the pros with the pressure of living up to his junior hockey reputation, the change of scenery in Washington gave Connolly the chance to blossom as an effective checker who still possesses the hands of sniper.
“I have a soft spot for Brett,” said Tampa head coach Jon Cooper last week in a Sports Illustrated article. “He’s a gifted scorer. The one thing he’s always had is that gift…. But that was kind of his go-to. And there wasn’t really a ton else to his game. Now he plays D, he’s responsible, he’s hard on pucks, got a strong stick…. I’m really impressed with the way he’s developed. It took him a little bit of time to figure it all out.”
Connolly has fed off the influence of the Caps’ top offensive players. He took T.J. Oshie’s advice and switched to CCM sticks and adopted a different curve and flex, which helped improve his shot. It doesn’t hurt his game that he practices daily with the likes of Oshie, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeni Kuznetsov and Alex Ovechkin.
“They’re good players for a reason, they work at it and they’re students of the game,” said Connolly. “Ovie’s one of the few guys in the history of hockey who can score the way he does. He can score from anywhere on the ice and he’s got that natural ability and he’s so big and strong.
“I’ve just been able to come in here and just play – there’s no pressure on me to be a go-to guy. I just go out there and play and chip in and be part of it and I’ve found that’s helped me gain confidence in my game. I’ve played on a line with a lot of these guys and I’m very happy with the way my career has gone in the last couple years. It’s been a big turnaround for me and it hasn’t been easy.”
As much as Connolly has raised his profile with his play on the ice in the playoffs, it’s not just his hockey skills garnering attention. He made The Tonight Show this past Friday night with Jimmy Fallon, when Connolly’s unsmiling Capitals team mug shot was featured in the segment, Stanley Cup Superlatives. “Most likely to have been told by the photographer, ‘Maybe let’s try one where you don’t smile.’”
The video clip of Connolly’s interaction with six-year-old Capitals’ fan Keelan Moxley during the warmup in the Columbus series as he tried to toss her a puck that twice was intercepted by boys on other side of the little girl went viral, resulting in more than three million online hits. Caps’ owner Ted Leonsis gave Moxley and her parents his first-row seats and she’s been there for every home game since.
“She’s kind of been our good luck charm,” said Connolly.
The Golden Knights are the Cinderella story of the century, an expansion gang of misfits that reeled off 51 wins and finished fifth overall in the NHL with 109 points, four more than the Capitals, who were sixth. In 1974-75, when Washington joined the league, there were slim pickings available in the expansion draft and the Caps won just eight of their 80 games and had just 21 points, records of futility which still stand in the modern-era NHL.
The Ovechkin-era Caps never got past the second round of playoffs until this year and Connolly says Washington fans are starved for a victory celebration. D.C. United won the Major League Soccer crown in 2004 and the 1991 Super Bowl-champion Redskins were the last Washington team to win a championship in the big-four pro sports.
“Our fans are jacked up – it’s been a tough stretch of time where all the sports teams aren’t getting past the hump where other cities are. They’re dying for a winner and hopefully we can give it to them,” said Connolly. “They’re great fans, we sell out every night.
“It’s a good hockey town and when (Ovechkin) came in he really changed that and kind of transformed it into what it is just because of how good of a player he was and how exciting he was as a young player and obviously he’s still exciting. He’s just a lot of fun to be around and he’s been incredible in these playoffs.”
Connolly, who celebrated his 26th birthday on May 2nd, makes his off-season home in Toronto, where he lives with his wife Katrina. She will join the Connolly family entourage for the two games in Las Vegas with his mother Dawn, father Pat and brother Josh making the trip from Prince George, along with his grandfather Richard McDonell of Newfoundland. If the Caps reach their goal of four more wins, then Connolly will have a hand in planning the Stanley Cup parade along George Street to city hall.
“The whole city and all my friends from when I was growing up – the teachers and coaches – are in my corner and I think about it a lot,” he said. “Once we beat Tampa you start thinking about the what-ifs and how much fun it would be if I could make that happen for the city of Prince George.
“It’s not going to be easy. Vegas has a great team and so do we and both teams are going to give every ounce of energy they’ve got and hopefully it’s us at the end of the day and we can have a good summer and a good memory for where I grew up.”
