The Vegas Golden Knights (36-26-16) extended their winning streak to four games and their point streak to six with a 2-1 win over the Vancouver Canucks (22-47-8) Tuesday night at Rogers Arena.<\/p>\n
Brayden McNabb and Cole Smith scored for the Golden Knights, who limited the Canucks to just 11 shots in the game. Carter Hart collected his third straight win with a 10-save effort on a quiet but successful night.<\/p>\n
Ben Hutton and Brandon Saad returned to the lineup in place of Kaedan Korczak and Reilly Smith, respectively. Saad tallied an assist and finished the game with a plus-one rating, three shots and a hit in 13:25, while Hutton was a minus-one with three blocks in 13:53.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights held the Canucks without a shot on goal for the first 14:28 of the contest and finished the opening frame with a 10-2 edge. However, neither team scored thanks to Canucks netminder Nikita Tolopilo\u2019s strong play.<\/p>\n
Vegas outshot Vancouver 12-5 in the second period, but the two clubs came away with a goal apiece.<\/p>\n
The Canucks opened the scoring when Max Sasson broke through at 12:50 of the middle frame to give the home team the 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
But Vegas\u2019 best offensive defenseman since the Olympic break broke through less than three minutes later to knot things up at 1-1.<\/p>\n
Tomas Hertl helped screen the goalie for McNabb\u2019s fifth of the year, which tied his career high in goals.<\/p>\n
Hart didn\u2019t face much action throughout the contest, but he made a massive save on Elias Pettersson at the end of the second period to keep things tied going into the third.<\/p>\n
Despite the fact that Vegas led 22-7 in shots through 40 minutes, the two teams were tied.<\/p>\n
But once again, the Golden Knights were extremely stingy defensively, holding the Canucks without a shot for the first 13:58 of the frame.<\/p>\n
But just over 12 minutes into the period, Vegas grabbed its first lead of the night courtesy of an excellent effort by Smith, who forced a turnover, completed a give-and-go with Nic Dowd and then scored from the slot. His second of the season (and first with a goalie between the pipes) made it 2-1 and proved to be the game-winner.<\/p>\n
In the end, the Canucks recorded four shots in the final frame, though they had a glorious opportunity to tie things up with a power play for the final 1:41 of regulation.<\/p>\n
However, the Vegas penalty kill came through to close out the 2-1 win.<\/p>\n
The win helps Vegas improve to 4-0-0 under new bench boss John Tortorella.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights got off to a decent start but failed to take advantage of the massive shot discrepancy. The game proved to be much closer than it should have been, but the Golden Knights didn\u2019t kept grinding.<\/p>\n
Even after giving up the first goal, it took only a few minutes for the Golden Knights to tie it, and they stepped things up for an important third period to claim the critical two points.<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly think we started the game really well,\u201d Dowd said. \u201cIn my opinion, it\u2019s probably one of those games where you want to jump on a team early. You\u2019re getting chances, you want to try to put those away and kind of step on them a little bit, and obviously we didn\u2019t. They\u2019re still a good NHL hockey team; they\u2019re gonna find ways to try and produce offense, and they did.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut sticking with it, not getting bored, trying to stay consistent, understanding that the tough plays are the ones who are gonna earn you offense and not make you play defense, and we didn\u2019t get away from that, and we were rewarded with it down the stretch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hart had a quiet night but stood tall when needed, particularly at the end of the second period and on the late penalty kill. He was able to stay fresh despite not being tested, making each save count. He is undefeated over his last three starts, allowing just five goals in that stretch.<\/p>\n
\u201cCarter made two or three really timely saves,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cIt\u2019s gotta be hard for him; there just wasn\u2019t much action there. He made some key saves, and \u2026 he was real big for us [on the late penalty kill] when everything\u2019s buzzing around the blue paint. I thought he did a really good job of being big.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tortorella went back to a loaded top line when he put Jack Eichel, Mark Stone and Mitch Marner together. The trio played 7:31 and led 12-4 in Corsi, 6-0 in shots, 6-2 in scoring chances and 3-1 in high-danger chances with a 90.59 percent expected goal share, though they didn\u2019t produce in the low-scoring affair.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we can do that because they\u2019re all responsible,\u201d Tortorella said about stacking the top line. \u201cSometimes when teams put their top guys together, it\u2019s all or nothing. It\u2019s score a goal or you\u2019re gonna get scored on. We\u2019re blessed here; our top guys play defense. Stoney\u2019s gonna do it no matter what. Mitch and Jack are two of the best 200-foot players in the league. That\u2019s what\u2019s pretty neat about this hockey club. Those guys lead the way defensively, too. So I feel very comfortable giving them some minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fact that Vegas has gotten offensive contributions from throughout the lineup makes it a more feasible option.<\/p>\n
McNabb and Smith as well as Brett Howden, Jeremy Lauzon and Colton Sissons have all lit the lamp in recent games. Depth scoring is a vital component of playing winning hockey, particularly Golden Knights hockey, particularly in tight games.<\/p>\n
This game was much closer than the shot count would indicate. It wasn\u2019t an ideal performance against the lowly Canucks, but the Golden Knights took care of business, which is all that matters at this time of year.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn a night where it was just a grind, we just stayed with it,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cWe got a goal by a defenseman, and we got a goal by Cole Smith, which I think\u2019s a really good sign for our team, not leaning on the top guys all the time. We just stayed with it, and we checked forward most of the night. It certainly wasn\u2019t pretty. But find a way to lead, and we found a way to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t too long ago that the Golden Knights were finding creative ways to lose games. Things have changed.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights had to have two points in Vancouver, and they got them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t give them much,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cI thought their goaltender played really well. But it\u2019s just one of those games that can get away from you, and that\u2019s what I like about our team. They stayed with it. \u2026 Good teams win those games, where teams that don\u2019t get there in the end lose those games. So to me, it\u2019s a good sign for the hockey club.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result of the win, Vegas is now tied for first place in the Pacific Division with the Edmonton Oilers, who lost 6-5 in overtime to Utah on Tuesday. Anaheim is in the midst of a six-game skid and now trails the Oilers and Golden Knights by one point through 78 games.<\/p>\n
Vegas is six points away from clinching a playoff spot with four games remaining.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights will continue this road trip Thursday in Seattle and Saturday in Colorado before returning home to wrap up the regular season with matchups against the Jets and Kraken next week.<\/p>\n
Statistics courtesy of Natural Stat Trick.<\/p>\n
Photo courtesy of the Golden Knights<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vegas Golden Knights (36-26-16) extended their winning streak to four games and their point streak to six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5129],"tags":[149,5317,5,4,74,39,5316],"class_list":{"0":"post-547687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vegas-golden-knights","8":"tag-golden-knights","9":"tag-goldenknights","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-vegas","13":"tag-vegas-golden-knights","14":"tag-vegasgoldenknights"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116370069594785936","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}