This deep into the season, now into single digits in games remaining, the Vegas Golden Knights are still finding ways to rally.

That’s the good news for them. The bad news is, they can’t afford to keep coming up on the losing side of it.

It happened again, though, with the Knights rallying from a three-goal deficit to earn a point for the second straight game, but losing 5-4 in a shootout to the Washington Capitals at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday night.

“We need two points,” defensemen Rasmus Andersson said. “There’s no sugarcoating it. We need two points.”

Andersson was part of a furious second-period rally that turned a 3-0 deficit into a tie game in a span of 2 minutes, 40 seconds.

Nic Dowd, against his former team, scored his first goal as a member of the Knights at 10:38 while short-handed. Andersson added another short-handed goal 25 seconds later, and Jack Eichel tied it 3-3 at 13:18.

Mitch Marner’s power-play goal 31 seconds into the third gave the Knights their first lead in three games.

But Capitals center Dylan Strome tied it with a power-play goal with 11:56 remaining to tie it 4-4. Strome was called for a double-minor high-sticking penalty at 4:36, but a slashing call on Andersson and a trip called on Marner 27 seconds apart put Washington on the power play.

Washington went 2-for-6 on the power play.

“There’s a lot of skilled players on the power play,” Andersson said. “We gave them too many today and they capitalized.”

Eichel finished with a goal and two assists, and Andersson had his second multi-point game as a member of the Knights (32-26-15), who now are three points back of the Edmonton Oilers for second place in the Pacific Division despite dropping to 5-10-2 since the Olympic break.

They did push their lead on third place to four points after the Los Angeles Kings lost 6-2 Saturday to the Utah Mammoth.

“We’ve got to stick with it,” coach Bruce Cassidy said.

The score could’ve been much worse than it was early. Strome hit the post 13 seconds in. Capitals defensemen Cole Hutson and Rasmus Sandin each hit a post nine seconds apart midway through the frame.

Fourth-line center Hendrix Lapierre took a wall pass from Ivan Miroshnichenko, got around Brayden McNabb and scored at 6:06 of the first for a 1-0 Washington lead.

Rookie center Justin Sourdif scored a power-play goal at 1:55 of the second, and Anthony Beaufillier deflected a Ryan Leonard shot at 6:49 for the three-goal lead.

Dowd, who was traded to the Knights on March 5 for goaltender Jesper Vikman and two draft picks, stripped the puck from Leonard in the Capitals’ zone and beat former Knights goalie Logan Thompson for his first goal since Feb. 2.

“It’s not that it was against the Caps,” Dowd said. “I have no ill will to the guys over there. Great group of individuals, just like in here. It just felt good to get on the board and hear the building erupt.”

Andersson took a stretch pass from Eichel, weaved through traffic and beat Thompson 25 seconds later to make it 3-2.

It took another valiant comeback for the Knights to make something out of this game. That was something to build off earlier in the year.

The time for building momentum off valiant comebacks is running thin. The schedule is favorable down the stretch with nine games remaining.

“It’s too late in the year to sort of change everything,” Cassidy said. “We’re not going to go into a 6-5 game and try and change our whole identity and how we play.

“We need wins. I understand. It feels like we’re limping along, but parts of our game are really good. We just got to tie it all together.”

Contact Danny Webster at dwebster@reviewjournal.com. Follow @DannyWebster21 on X.