Las Vegas — In this city where many hopes and dreams are dashed, the Red Wings saw their playoff aspirations take another massive hit.

Vegas sank the Wings further from the playoff picture Saturday with a 6-3 victory over the Wings.

Alex DeBrincat’s 32nd goal, at 9 minutes, 36 seconds of the third period, cut the Vegas lead to 5-3. But Vegas’ Jack Eichel scored his 22nd goal, into an empty net, at 17:59 to restore a three-goal Vegas lead advantage and send the Wings to yet another painful defeat.

With the loss, the Wings (32-31-6, 70 points) fell nine points behind Ottawa (79) and five behind Montreal (75) in the race for the two Eastern Conference wild-card spots. With only 13 games left for the Wings, the hope of ending an eight-year playoff drought is growing grim by the day.

The runway, as it were, is definitely getting shorter for the Wings.

“Thirteen games is a lot, but we can’t take any more games off,” DeBrincat said. “Every game is a must win now.”

BOX SCORE: Golden Knights 6, Red Wings 3

Lucas Raymond and Patrick Kane scored the Wings’ power-play goals — but the Wings allowed two Vegas power-play goals themselves and several others on a variety of defensive lapses. Kane and Dylan Larkin each had two assists.

The Wings’ defensive lapses were exposed by the powerful Golden Knights (41-20-8, 90 points) all evening.

“We were good enough offensively to win the game, and not close enough defensively to win,” coach Todd McLellan said. “We score two power-play goals, you should be able to find your way out of that game with a win. Now, they get two (power-play goals) and our penalty kill wasn’t every good, but we’re still giving up way too much.

“As you play these top end teams, the mistakes end up in the net a lot quicker than maybe it does against other teams and gives us an indication of how much we need to cut them down and how much we need to play to better in certain areas.”

Tomas Hertl had a three-goal night for the Golden Knights (two of them on the power play), with Nicolas Roy and Mark Stone adding the other goals. Eichel added three assists to his empty-net goal for a four-point night.

The Wings’ penalty kill – ranked last in the NHL – again was a disappointing aspect in this game allowing two Vegas power-play goals at key junctures.

“I can’t pinpoint it,” said Larkin of the penalty-kill struggles. “It seems like it goes in all different ways. That’s probably the most frustrating (part) all season long, that we can’t get the big kill at the right time.”

Raymond opened the scoring with his 24th goal, shooting a puck that appeared to glance off a Vegas defender’s stick past goaltender Adin Hill.

But the Golden Knights roared back with three first-period goals (and had an apparent fourth erased on a Wings’ successful video challenge for offside).

Hertl scored his first goal, on the power play, jamming a pass from Stone past Talbot at 11:47. Hertl then gave Vegas the 2-1 lead at 16:32 of the first period, getting his stick on Brayden McNabb’s shot from the point.

Roy scored somewhat of a backbreaker with his 10th goal, with just three seconds left in the first period. Roy got behind the Wings’ defense, went down the middle of the ice, and slipped a backhander past Talbot.

Roy’s goal was doubly frustrating because the Wings had just won a challenge taking away a Vegas goal, and keeping it a 2-1 Golden Knights lead.

“Not sure that’s the way you want to go into an end of the period,” McLellan said. “You win the challenge, it’s at 2-1 on the road against a real good hockey team, and you’ll take it. But to give up a lazy board work goal like that, that’s unacceptable.”

Goaltender Cam Talbot, making his first start since March 10, stopped 29 shots.

The Wings continue this four-game road trip — they’ve lost the first two and are 2-9-0 in their last 11 games overall — Monday in Utah.

“We have to be honest with each other and we were again between periods tonight,” McLellan said. “We talk about it, wanting to be in the playoffs, but we’re not sure we always want to be in the shooting lanes, we’re not sure we – and it’s not everybody – but picking and choosing do we really want to do it around the net, do we really want to be hit by the puck. Do we want to do the board work when it’s hard?

“If the answer is yes to that from everybody, then we have a chance. If the answer is yet to those questions from 85 percent of the players we don’t, and it’s simple as that. We have to keep asking those questions.”

ted.kulfan@detroitnews.com

@tkulfan

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