Vegas Golden Knights: 4 bugaboos that proved to be the downfall in WCF

4. Coaching Mishaps

Pete DeBoer was brought in by the Vegas Golden Knights because of his ability to push all the right buttons.

After all, he did take both the New Jersey Devils and the San Jose Sharks to the Stanley Cup Final in his first year behind the bench.

So the hope was that DeBoer would arrive in Vegas, push the right buttons with this stacked and incredibly talented roster and give them the tools to make a deep run and win it all.

However, when it mattered most DeBoer failed to deliver what was asked of him when he was hired as Gerard Gallant’s replacement.

He failed to push any of the right buttons and his inability to make adjustments on the fly proved a fatal death knell for his team.

After scoring just six goals in the first four games of the series and staring a 3-1 series deficit in the face, it was on DeBoer to devise a plan to spark his offense into life while combatting Dallas’ ability to clog up the slot area in Game 5.

However, he instead opted to stick with his guns and keep faith with a system and a style of play that hadn’t worked against a team smelling blood and keen to finish the series off.

Also, having built a two nothing lead, the Golden Knights had the chance to strengthen their grip on the game with three power play attempts in the second period, but they couldn’t convert on any of them.

DeBoer failed to make any crucial adjustments on the fly to his power play units, and he couldn’t come up with a way to shut the door on Dallas when they were pressing late in the game.

A lot of the responsibility for Vegas’ exit from the postseason has to fall on the shoulders of Pete DeBoer, and he will need to learn from those lessons in order to meet lofty expectations in 2020-21.