Knights need to find way to slow down high-flying Ducks

LAS VEGAS — For the Vegas Golden Knights, goaltending is not a problem as they try to navigate their way through the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

You know what is a problem? The overall speed of the Anaheim Ducks.

And if the Knights don’t figure a way to slow down the Ducks, this series won’t last very long.

The Ducks got right back in this series, winning 3-1 Wednesday at T-Mobile Arena and evening the best-of-seven series at a game apiece. And they did it with quickness exiting their own end and getting the puck moving to where the Vegas defense found itself out of position and leaving Carter Hart defenseless.

Game 3 will be Friday night at the Honda Center where Anaheim now enjoys the home-ice advantage. It’s up to John Tortorella to figure this out and come up with a solution.

“It’s a long series,” he said. “We’re always concerned as coaches no matter what. Win or lose. We still have some things to work on.”

Things like not letting Anaheim exit their end of the ice as easily as it has done the first two games of the series. Like getting the offense to forecheck harder and finish plays when they have possession.

And there’s staying out of the penalty box. There were the myriad penalties taken by the Golden Knights, including three in the offensive zone — a no-no under any circumstances but especially in the playoffs. And while the Ducks once again failed to cash in, including a 5-on-3 situation that was an extended power play while Jack Eichel served a double-minor for high sticking, penalties disrupt the normal flow of things when it comes to rolling out your lines.

“Outstanding,” Tortorella said of the job his penalty killers performed as the Ducks went 0-for-5 with the man advantage. “It screws us up when we wanted to get a good start and when you have guys in the box, it affects things as you try to start the first period. But the penalty kill was fantastic.”

Mark Stone, who scored the Knights’ goal with 5.6 seconds remaining on a late power play, said having a constant parade to the box is not good hockey.

“It doesn’t help when you kill the first eight to 10 minutes of the game,” he said. “You lose some guys in the first period. We got the kills when we needed them. We got it done but we couldn’t get back in the saddle. We couldn’t get the sustained pressure on them.”

Hart was at his sharpest when his team needed him. He is in a rhythm right now which comes with having start eight straight playoff games. You figure things out and you find a groove.

But his defensemen were caught out of position more than once though the Ducks did cash in after Beckett Sennecke was left unattended in front while Kaedan Korczak and Ben Hutton were doing who-knows-what in their end of the ice and the talented young right wing gave Anaheim a 1-0 lead 11:23 into the second period.

And it was more of the same 6:36 into the third when Noah Hanifin was out of position and no one bothered to pick up Leo Carlsson, who was by his lonesome in front of Hart. A flick of the stick and it was 2-0 Anaheim.

And while we’ve grown accustomed to Vegas mounting third-period rallies all season, such was not going to be the case in Game 2. The Ducks were the faster, smarter, more aggressive team. An empty net goal from Jansen Harkins, a last-minute addition to the lineup made it 3-0 with 3:30 to play and sealed Game 2 for Anaheim.

The Ducks carried the play for a good portion of the night and perhaps Tortorella needs to rethink his decision to have Reilly Smith sit in favor of William Karlsson or Tomas Hertl or Keegan Kolesar, the latter two who have struggled mightily in the postseason.

“I felt better today,“ Karlsson said as he returns from the lower body injury that sidelined him from Nov. 8 until he was in the lineup Monday for the Knights’ Game 1 win. “So it’s a step forward. I’m not cramping, so it’s good.”

Tortorella did mix things up as his team trailed, moving Stone back up to the top line with Jack Eichel and Ivan Barbashev while dropping Pavel Dorofeyev down to Hertl’s line, a move that didn’t quite pay off.

“I think we need to have the puck more in their end,” Tortorella said. “A lot of times we were one-and-done. We need to create more pressure there and it will slow down their attack.”

Karlsson said: “We probably need to pressure them more in their end. We have to forecheck more.”

In some ways, we’re seeing almost a carbon copy of the first round vs. Utah. The Mammoth showed up in Game 2, evened the series and were very much in it. Except Hart is sharper in round 2 and Lukas Dostal, Anaheim’s goalie, is better than Karel Vejmelka was for Utah.

But each series crafts its own identity. For Tortorella, Utah is in his rear-view mirror. His focus is where it needs to be: on Anaheim

“I need to look at the tape,” he said as he pondered what happened in Game 2 Wednesday. “I thought there were some really good minutes with the puck for us, some minutes where we’re just not there.

“But that’s why you play a series. I have full trust we’re going to find our way and play our best game. We’ll find our way and get there.” palladian.co.za

Anthony Slater: Anthony Edwards full media availability “We started the game too cool.” On the doubles: “They was playing crazy, right?” Is he ready to start? “That’s not up to me.” Ready to up minutes? “Whatever’s required.” On Finch saying they got punked: “Punked is crazy.”

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Anthony Edwards full media availability

“We started the game too cool.”

On the doubles: “They was playing crazy, right?”

Is he ready to start? “That’s not up to me.”

Ready to up minutes? “Whatever’s required.”

On Finch saying they got punked: “Punked is crazy.” pic.twitter.com/0ymqRmwYZt

— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) May 7, 2026

This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Anthony Edwards full media availability “We started …

NEW YORK — Maybe you thought Joel Embiid missing Wednesday’s Game 2 of the 2026 Eastern Conference semifinals series between the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers threatened to sap all the drama out of the Sixers’ attempt to get right and get level after their Game 1 destruction.

Well, Mike Brown didn’t.

“They’re still a good team, you know?” the Knicks head coach said before Game 2. “They’ve got a lot of guys that can put the ball on the floor and attack the rim. They can shoot 3s. They still like to get out in transition. They’re a good team with [Embiid] — obviously, they’re a really good team, because he’s a Hall of Famer, All-NBA selection — but without him, they have some guys that are capable of stepping up.”

Some of those guys did step up Wednesday. Tyrese Maxey attacked off the bounce, scoring 15 of his 26 points in the second quarter, resting for just 72 seconds in the first half and playing the entire second half — a 46-minute, 48-second performance for the All-Star point guard. Paul George came out scorching hot, drilling his first four shots on his way to a five-3-pointer evening, while also sliding across defensive matchups like the two-way star he’s long been.

VJ Edgecombe and Kelly Oubre Jr. each hit three 3-pointers and grabbed a handful of rebounds. Reserve center Adem Bona pounded the offensive glass and protected the rim in the first half. Backup big man Dominick Barlow had two dunks, a layup, two blocks, a steal and several stops against Jalen Brunson on switches in the second half.

Two nights after getting absolutely shellacked, the shorthanded and overmatched Sixers were putting together a performance that dragged a Knicks team that had only played blowouts over the past couple of weeks down into the mud — a physical, foul-filled, aggressive slugfest; a fistfight in a phone booth in which neither team could gain more than three possessions of separation.

“It was a playoff basketball game, you know,” Brown said. “The game was ugly offensively throughout most of the game. You give the Sixers a lot of credit — we knew that they were going to come out, they're going to be more physical, they were going to try to get in the passing lanes and activate the ball a little bit more. So you give them credit.

“But I also give our guys credit.”

The Knicks earned that praise because, when hit with a real counterpunch for the first time since CJ McCollum called game for the second time, they didn’t buckle or fold. They withstood Philly’s pressure, kept firing back and tightened the screws defensively, holding the visitors to just one field goal over the final six minutes and 52 seconds of the fourth quarter, authoring a 12-3 run in the guts of the game to score a so-grimy-it’s-golden 108-102 win. The Knicks took a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. Game 3 tips off in Philadelphia at 7 p.m. ET on Friday.

“We got the stops that was needed,” said Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns, who battled foul trouble throughout the first half but got going after intermission, finishing with 20 points, 10 rebounds, 7 assists and a steal in 27 minutes. “Got the rebounds — I think that was something that was really hurting us, with their offensive rebounding — and we found a way to get the stops and end those possessions.”

Those stops held up because the Knicks also got the buckets they needed — just enough of them, anyway.

After struggling with his jumper throughout the postseason, Josh Hart canned a corner 3 off an OG Anunoby drive-and-kick to tie the game at 99 with 6:25 to go. Brunson continued attacking young big man Barlow on switches, getting to his spots for a pair of midrangejumpers to push the lead to four. Mikal Bridges, whose early-playoff woes were so pronounced that Brown had to field questions about whether he’d be benched, bailed out a possession that featured George blocking an Anunoby dunk attempt — a possession in which Anunoby appeared to hurt his right leg, which will be a huge storyline between now and Game 3 — by making a key midrange pull-up to put New York up by six with less than three minutes to go.

“On offense, huge shoutout to [Mikal Bridges], to Jalen, making the big shots and giving us a lead like that,” Towns said. “But our defense was something special.”

After 33, 29 and 28 points in the first three quarters, Philadelphia managed just 12 in the fourth, shooting 4-for-19 from the floor and 1-for-10 from 3-point range, with stars Maxey and George missing 10 of their 12 shots in the deciding frame.

“We played good enough defense to win that game,” 76ers head coach Nick Nurse said. “Especially in the fourth. But again, you know, I mean — hold ‘em to 19 in the fourth. You gotta hope you can score more than 20 in a quarter.”

The Sixers had their chances: a clean above-the-break look for Oubre with Towns sagging back toward the paint; a corner 3 for Edgecombe with Anunoby late on the contest; a wide-open Maxey 3 in the corner off an offensive rebound; a George pull-up in the final minute. But none of them went down, and combined with a pair of costly turnovers — Maxey losing the ball on a drive with 2:39 remaining, and Barlow throwing the ball away trying to feed Oubre on a baseline cut with 2:08 to go — that gave the Knicks just enough cushion to be able to get across the finish line.

“I just wish that a couple of those really good offensive [possessions], we would’ve … you know, all’s we needed was one or two. We didn’t need all five of ‘em,” Nurse said. “We just needed one or two to kind of get the thing down to the end, where we at least had a chance.”

On one hand, it’s reasonable to wonder whether those late-game possessions didn’t break the Sixers’ way, in part, because the players executing them were dog tired. Maxey played the entire second half, facing aggressive Knicks coverages aimed at getting the ball out of his hands and preventing him from getting to the rim the whole time. George and Edgecombe both played more than 22 of the 24 minutes, balancing shot-making responsibility with significant defensive tasks, as the rookie served as the tip of the spear in Philadelphia’s game plan on Brunson — a defensive effort that Nurse later graded as “above-average,” with the Knicks superstar scoring 26 points on 21 shots with 6 assists and 3 turnovers — while George slid over to cross-match onto Towns in the fourth.

“I thought we just might've ran out of gas a little bit in the fourth,” said George, who finished with 19 points on 7-for-18 shooting, 6 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 blocks and 2 steals in 43 minutes. “We could've did a better job of getting some easier ones, but I think we did just run out of gas a little bit in the fourth.”

On the other, with Embiid unavailable, offense at a premium, and the threat of a 2-0 deficit staring him in the face, you can understand why Nurse decided to stick with the stars he still had.

“Tyrese played almost the entire game, and he’s a plus-minus of zero in a six-point loss,” Nurse said. “So even the minute and [12] seconds he was out obviously wasn’t very good.”

The Sixers gave themselves a much better chance Wednesday than they did in Game 1. They tested New York’s defense early, beginning Game 2 with a long-range barrage — six 3s in the first quarter, 58.8% shooting as a team in the opening frame — to jump out to a 33-31 lead after 12 minutes. Despite finally cooling off from distance themselves, the Knicks kept generating good looks and scoring with Philly, particularly when Towns was on the floor.

Which, admittedly, was not often. Even with Embiid sidelined, New York’s All-Star center picked up three fouls in the first half, limiting him to just over eight minutes of floor time through the opening two quarters.

“I don't want to lose the physicality — that’s just something that's done us well in the last game,” Towns said. “I'll look at the tape, I'll get better, more disciplined. You know, I don't want to put my team in that position again, so I got to do a better job.”

Towns wasn’t alone. Reserve New York center Ariel Hukporti, elevated into the backup slot with Mitchell Robinson ruled out for Game 2 due to illness, picked up four fouls in less than seven first-half minutes. For Philadelphia, Andre Drummond, starting in place of Embiid, committed four fouls in under 15 minutes, while the energetic Bona was called for five in 16 — part of a whistle-filled affair that featured 43 fouls and 53 free throws, and forced both coaches to go deeper into their rotations in search of a different way to win.

The Sixers come away knowing they can make New York sweat, with or without Embiid — that the Knicks’ desire to slow Maxey at all costs can be exploited; that they can generate good 3s against a Knicks defense that can at times over-help in the paint; that Bona and Barlow can give them a jolt of athleticism, shot-blocking and switchability on the defensive end; and that the Knicks are not, in fact, just going to shoot 70% on 2s and 50% on 3s every game.

“I think you learn a lot through each game,” Nurse said. “I think it took us a couple of games to figure out some of the rotations and matchups last series [against Boston], and I think the same thing is happening.”

“We definitely feel like we can pull ourselves out of this one,” Maxey said. “Gotta go home and get two.”

"We felt like we should've won it," Edgecombe said.

“We like where we're at,” George added.

So, too, do the Knicks, who find themselves two wins away from a second straight trip to the Eastern Conference finals. They got there behind a balanced effort, with Brunson, Towns, Anunoby and Bridges all scoring at least 18 points, and by reminding themselves that, even on a night when they don’t play a perfect game, they’ve still got more than enough to get the job done.

“It was just us executing, being disciplined, finding a way to get a gritty win,” Towns said. “Something that, for better or for worse, hasn't been in our cards the last four games, but you know, this showed a lot about our locker room and our team.”