LAS VEGAS — Tomas Hertl was surprisingly traded by the San Jose Sharks to the Vegas Golden Knights a little over two years ago. Now he and his not-so-new teammates are one win away from advancing to the Stanley Cup Final.
Hertl weaved his way toward the slot and scored a dazzling winning goal at 8:21 of the third period on Sunday night as the Golden Knights rallied from a three-goal deficit to defeat the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche 5-3 and move to within one game of their third Cup Final appearance in nine years as a franchise.
Hertl’s goal, his third of the playoffs, came off of assists from Mark Stone and Kaedan Korczak, and sent the raucous sold-out crowd at T-Mobile Arena into hysterics.
“I’m just happy we won and so happy I can chip in with some plays,” Hertl said to ESPN. “(Stone) made a great play to me, and I’m just happy for the win. I don’t look at who’s scoring, who’s making plays. We just want to win hockey games.”
The Golden Knights will go for what would be a stunning best-of-seven series sweep of the Avalanche in the Western Conference final on Tuesday night. Colorado led the NHL with a 55-16-11 record this season, but is set to become just the latest team to win the Presidents’ Trophy but fall short of winning the Stanley Cup.
The Chicago Blackhawks in 2013 were the last team to win the Presidents’ Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season.
“We (threw) everything we had at them,” Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog said, “and didn’t bounce our way tonight.”
PURE FILTH FROM TOMAS HERTL 😮💨
📺: Sportsnet pic.twitter.com/8IRzYyneGk
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 25, 2026
Hertl, 32, was drafted by the Sharks in 2012 and spent the first 10-plus years of his NHL career in San Jose, moving into sixth place on the team’s all-time scoring list with 484 points in 712 regular-season games. One of his biggest goals as a Shark came in the first round of the 2019 playoffs, when he scored shorthanded at the 11:17 mark of overtime to lift San Jose past Vegas 2-1 in a do-or-die Game 6.
The win extended the series to a seventh game, which the Sharks won 5-4 in overtime on a goal by Barclay Goodrow.
Wanting a chance to win the Cup after four straight playoff-less seasons with the Sharks, Hertl agreed to waive his no-movement clause to clear the way for a trade to the rival Golden Knights.
Hertl, along with two third-round draft picks, was traded by the rebuilding Sharks to the Golden Knights on March 8, 2024, for center David Edstrom and a 2025 first-round draft pick. The Sharks, who retained a small percentage of Hertl’s salary cap hit, then used those assets to help acquire prospect goalie Yaroslav Askarov from the Nashville Predators in August 2024.
Vegas won the Cup in 2023 but lost in the first round of the playoffs in 2024 and in the second round last year. Now the Golden Knights are five wins away from their second title in franchise history. They also reached the Cup final in their first season in 2018.
“There’s nothing like playing these types of games,” Stone, the Golden Knights’ captain, told Sportsnet.
Vegas, which fell behind 3-0 after the first period on Sunday, had an all-time playoff record of 0-19 when they trailed by that many goals. The Avalanche were 74-1 when holding such a lead.
“We’ve been all season many times down,” Hertl said. “We’ve come back so many times. Even after the first when we were down 3-0 we knew we could do it.”
Colorado, featuring ex-Sharks Brent Burns and Mackenzie Blackwood, will now try to become just the fifth NHL team to win a series after falling behind 3-0. The Los Angeles Kings were the most recent team to accomplish that in eliminating the Sharks in their 2014 first-round series.
Burns spent 11 seasons with the Sharks before he was traded in July 2022 to the Carolina Hurricanes for forward Steven Lorentz, goalie Eetu Mäkiniemi, and a conditional 2023 third-round draft pick. Now 41, Burns is currently the oldest player in the NHL without a Cup.
“It’s as low as it can get,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said of his team’s postgame emotions. “Because you’ve got a big hill to climb and in the next 24-36 hours, you’ve got to find a way to get over it.”
Hertl, Mark Stone, and William Karlsson each had a goal and an assist on Sunday. Keegan Kolesar and Brett Howden scored the other Golden Knights goals, and Mitch Marner and Korczak each tallied two assists. Golden Knights goalie Carter Hart made 32 saves.
Stone’s goal came on his first appearance since suffering a lower-body injury in Game 3 of the second-round series against Anaheim. Kolesar, who had gone 37 playoff games without a goal, picked up his first point of the postseason.
Landeskog, Nazem Kadri, and Jack Drury scored for the Avalanche, and Devon Toews had two assists. Scott Wedgewood stopped 18 shots. The Avalanche got back star defenseman Cale Makar, who missed the first two games of this series because of an upper-body injury. He was held without a point in just over 27 minutes of ice time.
The Avalanche dominated the first period by taking a 3-0 lead, but the Golden Knights thought they had cut the deficit to 2-1 when Pavel Dorofeyev appeared to score a power-play goal with 7:26 left. Officials immediately waved it off, and the decision was upheld on video review.
Colorado then made the Golden Knights pay when Drury found himself alone on a breakaway, deking Vegas goalie Hart to score the short-handed goal with 6:45 left for the three-goal lead.
But the Golden Knights didn’t let the two-goal swing trouble them too much, with Stone’s power-play goal 19 seconds into the second period sparking a three-goal answer to tie the game heading into the final period of regulation.
Then Hertl broke the deadlock — and now the Golden Knights just need to win one of four games.
There was a moment of silence before the game for two-time NASCAR champion driver and Las Vegas native Kyle Busch. He died Thursday at 41 after severe pneumonia developed into sepsis, according to a statement from Busch’s family.