Less than 24 hours after Tuch was on the wrong end of Braden Holtby’s miraculous save that sealed a Game 2 victory for the Capitals in the Stanley Cup Final, the Golden Knights forward was sitting in Sequoia, a restaurant in downtown D.C., with Sam Anas (a Potomac native), who was Tuch’s roommate when both forwards played for the Iowa Wild last season.
There were distractions, Tuch’s phone buzzing from tweets at his handle or Instagram posts that tagged him, but as Tuch and Anas, close friends, caught up and discussed how much Tuch’s life has changed over the past year, worrying about one play, one shot, seemed trivial.
“You have to laugh about it a little bit,” he said. “If you can’t laugh about it then you’re not going to be a good hockey player because things like that are going to happen all the time.”
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For every game-changing highlight, every play that goes viral and creates a moment that gets replayed over and over again, there’s a hero (Holtby) and, in this case, a loser (Tuch).
But Tuch isn’t even taking the moment in stride; as he stood in the locker room of Capital One Arena on Friday, a day before he and the Golden Knights will play Game 3 against the Capitals, Tuch said he was over the play.
“I just have to forget it. It happened; I’ve seen worse, I’ve seen better,” he said. “I know it’s a different game if I put that in, but you never know the outcome. They could have won in overtime, they could have won it at the end of the game. I just have to forget about it and move on to Game 3.”
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Forgetting has been part of what’s made Tuch so successful in Las Vegas this season. A first-round pick, selected No. 18 in the 2014 NHL Draft by the Wild, Tuch was one of the “misfits” cast away to the Golden Knights to become a part of their burgeoning army.
In reality, though, Tuch was anything but a misfit. With two seasons in Ann Arbor with the United States National Development Program, a high-profile recruitment by Boston College, and productive collegiate seasons, Tuch was pegged as part of the Wild’s future plans.
When those plans became too crowded, though, Tuch, at 21 years old and with six games of NHL experience, was a piece used by the Wild in an expansion draft deal, ending his short-lived career in Minnesota.
“I knew they were in a tough situation so I hold no grudges against them, but when I heard I was coming to Vegas I was pretty excited, honestly,” he said. “That idea that you’re coming to Vegas, and that expansion draft, and being a part of history — the first professional team in Vegas — it was just a really special time for my family and I, and I was really excited.”
One of Tuch’s first moments in the spotlight came during the Wild’s development camp in summer 2015. Tuch had just finished his freshman season at Boston College and would return for his sophomore year. But in July, Tuch was in Saint Paul with the rest of Minnesota’s prospects, showing some of the promise that made him a first-round pick a year prior.
On one of the last days of that development camp, the Wild held an intrasquad scrimmage. The final score was immaterial for a number of reasons, but it was also determined that, even if the game wasn’t tied, the event, made open to the public, would end in a shootout. Call it some post July 4 fireworks.
When it was Tuch’s turn to shoot, he slowly descended on the crease. Taking calculated strides, he dropped the puck through his own legs, dragged it around the fooled goaltender, and then cut out way wide before firing the puck in at an angle.
But what Tuch did next is what made it memorable. After button-hooking below the goal, Tuch holstered his stick, sword in sheath. Then he began to … let’s call it gyrate? He made his way up the boards, high-stepping his way back to the bench with his chest puffed out, craning his neck as he passed the opposing bench to make sure they saw the grin on his face.
“(Boston College assistant Mike Ayers) did that walk — it was like a high-step,” Tuch said in the Golden Knights locker room Friday, choreographing the steps from one side of the room to the other. “I did it on the ice, and I texted him. It still goes viral.”
Simply put, Tuch has never been short on confidence.
“You know what? It was ‘OK,’” Ayers said by phone, rating Tuch’s dance moves. “It was a good walk-off. I liked it. But I only did it in a joking way, so it was funny to see that he followed it up.
“I wish I had his hands that led up to that, but that’s for him.”
It’s a moment that Ayers said is indicative of Tuch’s personality, and one of the reasons he said he knows Tuch will be ready come Game 3.
“He’s always been a kid that’s had that,” Ayers said. “Some people think it’s cocky. I think in order for you to be a good player, especially in that league, you have to have a level of confidence that you can play, and you can take the pressure at certain times. There’s no doubt that he’ll be able to bounce back.”
When Tuch turned pro in 2016, the Wild roster was deep at the forward position. That portion of the depth chart featured Zach Parise, Mikko Koivu, Jason Zucker, Mikael Granlund, Nino Niederreiter, Charlie Coyle, Jason Pominville, Thomas Vanek and Tuch’s current Vegas teammate and expansion buddy, Erik Haula.
“Sometimes it’s hard to see through the glass at that time, but it’s good to have some adversity and understand how to get through it,” Ayers said. “It’s easy to be handed stuff. For Alex, he had to work for it a little bit.”
So with spots hard to come by, and Tuch battling an injury, he spent the majority of his first professional year in Iowa. In his 20-year-old season he scored 18 goals and 37 points in 57 AHL games, but said he felt he had a lot more to give.
“You have to just keep pushing it and moving on,” Tuch said.
So that he did.
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When he returned home to Syracuse that offseason, Tuch had an idea that he could be on the move in the expansion draft because of the numbers game. Wherever he was, Tuch’s goal was to make an NHL Opening Night roster that October. He worked with skating coach Francoise Methot to improve his foot speed. He was regularly in Strides gym, adding muscle mass to his 6-4 frame.
“I just wanted to come in, and my one main concern was just trying to make this team,” Tuch said. “I came up short a little bit.”
When the final cuts were made, Tuch was sent to AHL Chicago, where he spent three games before finding himself back in Vegas. Perhaps Tuch really had outgrown the minors; in those three games, he scored four goals and added an assist.
The numbers followed in the NHL. Playing in the Golden Knights’ top-six, Tuch scored 15 goals and 37 points in 78 games.
“I haven’t really been too worried about production or anything like that,” Tuch said. “I didn’t think about it. I didn’t know it was going to happen. I’m not surprised. I’m not not surprised; I’m just really excited to be here. It’s been a really fun year so far.”
The postseason has been much of the same, though. In his first Stanley Cup Playoff experience, Tuch has six goals in Vegas’ 17-game run.
“He’s such a big kid, and he skates so well for a big kid, and that’s an overlooked thing for him,” Ayers said. “So it was just a matter of time. And at the NHL level, it’s all about opportunity. In Minnesota he wasn’t getting the chances and the looks that he expected. Fortunately for him, he was able to get to Vegas and have a big impact.”
Of course, it’s the one he didn’t score in Game 2 that everyone’s talking about.
Not even Anas could make fun of Tuch on Thursday night when the two met on the banks of the Potomac River.
“He felt bad,” Tuch said. “Being a hockey player, especially an offensive player like him, you know that sometimes that happens and you miss that big opportunity, and you miss that wide-open net, and you just have to move on and forget about it.”
There’s no guidebook on how to approach a teammate who’s on the wrong end of one of those moments.
When the Golden Knights came onto the ice for practice Friday, Tuch got a hug from goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury.
“I didn’t hug him because of last game,” Fleury said. “It was because of today.”
If anyone in the Vegas locker room was nervous about Tuch’s psyche, they’re not showing it. Likewise, the Golden Knights coaches had no problems throwing Tuch out on the ice in the shifts after that missed chance, with Vegas playing with an extra attacker and chasing a one-goal deficit.
“They knew I was skating hard and I was going to the net hard,” Tuch said. “It was that kind of support and it’s really big for me.”
Other teammates showed their support in different ways. While Tuch did not name names, he made it clear that not everyone in the Golden Knights locker room shied away from joking about the elephant-save in the room.
“Guys were razzing me a little about it a little here,” Tuch said. “Anyone would say it’s constructive criticism.”
In a sense, that can be therapeutic for Tuch. In his first Stanley Cup Final, Tuch said he thought the nerves got to him a bit in Game 1, before an even-kilter Game 2.
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It’s why Tuch and his teammates aren’t dwelling on what could have been, but rather what they have to do now that they lost on home ice: Win a game in Washington to stand a chance to lift the Cup.
“What did he do wrong Wednesday?” head coach Gerrard Gallant asked. “No, he didn’t let the team down. He’s a 22-year-old kid I really like who had an outstanding playoffs.”
Fleury and James Neal both pulled Tuch aside and talked to him after Game 2. The message?
“Just don’t worry about it,” Fleury said. “It’s a couple tough bounces for him. It happens, right? It’s hockey. You never know how it’s going to turn out.
“It was important for him to put it behind him quickly so he can play his regular game come [Saturday].”
Because that’s where Tuch said his focus now lies. There’s no use in dwelling on the past because he can’t change it. And like Tuch said, the shot, had it gone in, would have tied Game 2, leaving a whole new butterfly effect on which to speculate.
All that’s left for him to do is move on, something Tuch has done well over the past year of his career.
“No nightmares; it’s fine,” Tuch said. “There’s a lot of hockey left to play. Maybe I’ll get [Holtby] back [Saturday] night.”
