ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2014 Dylan Coghlan isn\u2019t coming off the bench completely cold. The defenseman has played some important hockey games the past few weeks.<\/p>\n
The Stanley Cup Playoffs are a different animal, and Coghlan is making his NHL postseason debut for the Vegas Golden Knights<\/a> in an important Game 3 against the Anaheim Ducks<\/a> on Friday at Honda Center.<\/p>\n Coghlan will replace Kaedan Korczak on the third pairing, skating with Ben Hutton.<\/p>\n Jeremy Lauzon (upper body) remains out.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the message for me is don\u2019t change anything,\u201d Coghlan said. \u201cPlay my game, be a little bit gritty.\u201d<\/p>\n The 28-year-old blue liner is in his second tour of duty with the Knights.<\/p>\n Coghlan was undrafted but came up through the Knights organization. He appeared in 88 games from 2021-22 and had six goals and 19 points.<\/p>\n He was involved in the trade that sent Max Pacioretty to Carolina in July 2022. Coghlan appeared in 24 games over the next three seasons with the Hurricanes and Winnipeg Jets.<\/p>\n Coghlan signed a one-year deal with the Knights and scored a career-high 44 points in Henderson this season.<\/p>\n \u201cI think as the season went on, I was finding my game a little bit more,\u201d Coghlan said. \u201cThere are different systems in every team you got to. I had a bit of a slow start and then picked it up halfway through. I\u2019m playing the best hockey of my career, I feel like.\u201d<\/p>\n Coghlan brings a powerful shot to the lineup, giving each pairing someone who isn\u2019t afraid to put the puck on net.<\/p>\n Korczak played 11:31 in Wednesday\u2019s Game 2 <\/a>loss<\/a>, registering no shots and a minus-1 for the second straight game.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of positive feedback on (Coghlan),\u201d coach John Tortorella said. \u201c(Korczak\u2019s) just struggled a little bit in certain situations. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s been terrible, but we just want a change and we\u2019ll see where we go with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Tortorella has emphasized having the puck more in the offensive zone, and Coghlan might be able to help assist with that with a shot-first mentality.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s got a cannon,\u201d Hutton said. \u201cAny time he gets a chance to use, I\u2019m going to tell him to do it. Don\u2019t worry about the D-to-D (passing). I\u2019ll be going down there if there\u2019s a rebound.\u201d<\/p>\n Coghlan was called up from Henderson prior to the start of the series. He had one assist in three games with the Silver Knights at the beginning of their run in the Calder Cup Playoffs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a long time coming,\u201d Coghlan said. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been around it a lot. It\u2019s going to be exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2014 Dylan Coghlan isn\u2019t coming off the bench completely cold. The defenseman has played some important…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-658701","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\/658701","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=658701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}