After knotting its NHL Western Conference final seriesat 1-1 with a 3-1 victory at Winnipeg on Monday night, the Vegas Golden Knights now hold home-ice advantage for the best-of-seven series.
Winnipeg, which was an NHL-best 32-7-2 at home during the regular season, has actually played better on the road during the playoffs, winning four of its last five away from Bell MTS Place, including a 5-1 rout of Nashville in Game 7 in the conference semifinals.
The only road loss during that span was 5-4 in overtime in Game 2 against the Predators.
"We'll be ready to bounce back," Winnipeg center Paul Statsny said of heading into Wednesday night's Game 3 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. "That's playoff hockey, right? You win one and all of a sudden they get one and we lose one. You think you have momentum. We view this as a fresh start."
The Jets have outscored their opponents 21-9 in their last five playoff road games, which started with a 2-0 blanking of the Minnesota Wild in Game 4 of the quarterfinals. They outscored
Nashville 11-3 in their final two games at Bridgestone Arena where the Preds were 28-9-4 during the regular season.
Vegas was 29-10-2 at home during the regular season at T-Mobile Arena and is 4-1 there in the playoffs.
"I think you feed off the crowd for sure," Vegas defenseman Deryk Engelland said. "But the visiting team is coming in and trying to quiet the crowd down as much as they can. They're going to come out flying and we've got to be ready to go."
Vegas played without third leading scorer David Perron, who had 16 goals and 50 assists in the regular season and has seven assists in the playoffs, on Monday night.
Golden Knights coach Gerard Gallant wasn't sure whether Perron would be ready to go on Wednesday night.
— with files from Metro Source