The Vegas Golden Knights are one win from the freaking Stanley Cup Final

It has been clear for some time that the Golden Knights are serious. They took a favorable expansion draft setup last summer and hit on one of most lucrative parlays in Vegas history, getting career seasons from player after player who wound up doing more in the Knights’ inaugural season than general manager George McPhee could’ve dreamed. The Knights had shown by January that they were the best first-year expansion team ever in one of the major North American professional sports. By this stage, they are what they are: good.

This magic carpet ride of a season is a little extra real this morning, though. Vegas is up 3-1 on the Jets in the Western Conference Final after a 3-2 home win in Friday’s Game 4.

If they had already taken you on a journey from “Wow, this team’s kind of good, huh?” to “Damn, look at these guys!” to “Huh, they’re one of the best teams in the league,” right about now is when they take us all to the next logical step: “Holy hell, this expansion team might really make the Stanley Cup Final.”

That’s partially because they engender a kind of sappy team of destiny feel, but more because they have a three-time Cup-winning goalie who’s playing out of his damn mind.

For the second game in a row, the Jets out-shot and out-chanced the Knights, badly. And for the second game in a row, Fleury stood up to make sure it didn’t matter. After stopping 33 of 35 shots in Game 3, he turned back an amazing 36 of 38 in Game 4.

The Flower is 33, but he’s somehow better now than he ever was during a decade-long run as the starter for the Penguins. In Vegas, Fleury posted comfortable career highs in regular-season goals-against average and save percentage, and he’s now building one of the great playoff runs in league history.

Through 14 playoff games, Fleury is working on a .945 save percentage and 1.72 goals-against average. In the entire history of the NHL, two goaltenders have played 14 or more playoff games in a season and finished with those numbers or better: the Ducks’ Jean-Sebastian Giguere in a legendary 2003 run that earned him a Conn Smythe Trophy even without winning a Cup and the Kings’ Jonathan Quick in 2012, when he won a Cup. He’s had the work like hell to keep his team afloat at times, and he’s always done it.

Between Fleury’s first Cup win in Pittsburgh in 2009 and his last two in 2016 and ‘17, he was one of the worst playoff goaltenders in the league. He became so inclined to playoff meltdowns that he reportedly started working with a sports psychologist at one point. Now he’s the best goalie in the world and tickling opponents on the back of their heads while he shuts them down on behalf of an expansion club in the Western Conference Final. From Game 3, the best illustration of how much fun Fleury is having right now:

The Knights aren’t a bunch of scrubs riding their goalie to impossible success. They have a defense that’s better than it probably should be, and they’ve benefitted all year and all playoffs from emergent scorers like 5’9 winger Jonathan Marchessault, who had two goals including an empty-netter on Wednesday. But if Fleury were merely playing well, the Knights could’ve gone out in the first round. Instead, he’s playing at a historic level.

The Jets are likely to push back hard. But:

Unless they drop three games in a row for the first time since a stretch from late February to early March, they’re going to the Stanley Cup Final. The unimaginable has become the probable.

Note: This article was initially published after Game 3. It’s been updated to reflect the new reality of the Knights’ situation after Game 4. Not much changed!