Vegas in total control of Stanley Cup Final after whopping win in Game 2

LAS VEGAS – The glass slipper seems to have cracked.

Shattered, even.

The Cinderella story of the eighth-seeded Florida Panthers and their goaltender, Sergei Bobrovsky, seems to be coming to an end after a 7-2 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final at T-Mobile Arena on Monday night.

That result? It didn't particularly feel even quite that close, nor does the series as a whole, which is now in favor of the Golden Knights, two games to none, as the games shift to Sunrise starting on Thursday night.

Now two games away from their first championship in just their sixth year as a franchise, the Golden Knights scored the contest's first four goals over a span of 20 minutes and five seconds to knock Bobrovsky out of the game in favor of Alex Lyon, and poured it on late to cap off a game that was never in question.

The 34-year-old netminder had allowed just six goals on 174 shots in four games against the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference Final over a span of 321:05, but has now allowed eight goals on 46 shots thus far in the Stanley Cup Final.

"I’ll sweat about that one for the next two days," Panthers head coach Paul Maurice deadpanned, when asked if Bobrovsky would remain his starter.

"We can be a little better in front of our goaltender. He's been unbelievable for us, so I got him out to keep him rested."

Bobrovsky wasn't the only one who had something of an unexpected rest during the game.

Late in the second period, gritty Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk initially appeared to level Golden Knights star center Jack Eichel, the leading scorer in the playoffs, with a devastating open ice hit, one which sent the latter directly to the locker room. And, while that was still somewhat the case, a closer look revealed that Eichel, in seeing Tkachuk coming, appeared to toe pick with his lead skate and tumble into the path of Tkachuk, who was certainly going to hit him anyway, but the action made the collision far worse than it was going to originally be.

Regardless, it was the type of hit that seemed like it may knock Eichel out for the remainder of the game, if not further down the series. Instead, he returned for the third period, which provided Vegas with a huge boost.

"Once I got back to the locker room, I knew he was fine," Golden Knights forward Ivan Barbashev said from the home locker room. "It's a clean hit. He's just a little bit unlucky. He toe picked, and it is what it is, and I’m happy he's OK."

A vicious collision, but also a clean one, something that everyone involved seemed to agree with, with Eichel telling a group of reporters that was five or six rows deep around his locker that "it probably is a clean hit."

"He got up, and he skated off, and that's always step number one, not being on the ice and needing assistance," said Vegas head coach Bruce Cassidy. "He got hit hard, and between periods, I asked him and he was fine. It's OK to get hit in June. This is part of the journey. It hurts to win, and it's not supposed to be easy…I think he saw some of it coming, but not enough to get out of the way. It was a clean hit, that's hockey, and as a group, it was great to see him come back. Not only does it give us juice, but sometimes it can take away juice from the other team if see the guy come back."

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