LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2014 Vegas Golden Knights center William Karlsson will return for Game 1 of the team’s second-round playoff series against the Anaheim Ducks on Monday night after missing nearly six months with a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn’t speak a lot, just plays the game the right way,\u201d Golden Knights coach John Tortorella said following an optional practice that morning. \u201cLooking forward to getting him back in the lineup.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karlsson was hurt in the first period of Vegas\u2019 4-3 overtime loss against the Ducks on Nov. 8.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s been a long journey, but now I’m here,” Karlsson said. “It feels good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karlsson had four goals and three assists early in the season before the injury. He had back-to-back 50-point seasons, but finished with only 29 in 53 games last season, when he was sidelined twice because of injuries.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights held out the possibility that Karlsson, who has been an excellent two-way player, would return at some point even if it was deep in the playoffs. The organization never placed him on long-term injured reserve.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always had the goal in the back of my head that I wanted to return,\u201d Karlsson said. \u201cI always believed, so that kind of kept me going.”<\/p>\n
He was asked what his expectations were of his first game back.<\/p>\n
\u201cA hatty and six assists,\u201d Karlsson said jokingly. \u201cI’m going to keep the expectations low.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speculation of his return intensified when Karlsson returned to practice last week in Salt Lake City when the Golden Knights were playing the Utah Mammoth in their first-round series. He also practiced with the club’s American Hockey League affiliate in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson.<\/p>\n
Karlsson said getting his timing back could be an issue, but he thought \u201cconditioning should be there. Get the chemistry going with the team again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defenseman Jeremy Lauzon, who took a puck to his helmet in Friday’s 5-1 series-clinching victory at Utah, will not play, Tortorella said.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NHL playoffs: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/stanley-cup and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/p>\n
Mark Anderson, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2014 Vegas Golden Knights center William Karlsson will return for Game 1 of the team’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-649839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}