LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2014 Mitch Marner broke a third-period tie and the Vegas Golden Knights won the Pacific Division for the fifth time in their nine-year history, beating the Seattle Kraken 4-1 on Wednesday night to close the regular season.<\/p>\n
Two points ahead of Edmonton entering the night, Vegas needed only a point to win the Pacific and set up a first-round series against Utah. Edmonton will finish play Thursday night at home against Vancouver.<\/p>\n
Reilly Smith had two late goals, Shea Theodore also scored and Carter Hart made 22 saves to help Vegas win its third straight. The Golden Knights finished 39-26-17, going 7-0-1 since John Tortorella took over as coach for the fired Bruce Cassidy.<\/p>\n
Shane Wright scored for Seattle, and Nikke Kokko stopped 22 shots. The Kraken have lost two straight to fall to 34-36-11 with a game left Thursday night at Colorado.<\/p>\n
Marner gave Vegas a 2-1 lead at 1:23 of the third. Off a faceoff, defenseman Brayden McNabb took a long, straightaway shot that Marner tipped in for his 24th goal of the season.<\/p>\n
Theodore tied it with 2:25 left in the second. The defenseman got the puck at the right point off a faceoff, moved to the top of the circle and fired a wrist shot past Kokko’s glove.<\/p>\n
Wright opened the scoring at 2:24 of the second after missing the previous eight games because of an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n
Golden Knights captain Mark Stone played his 400th game for the franchise.<\/p>\n
Kraken: At Colorado on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Golden Knights: Host Utah in the first round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2014 Mitch Marner broke a third-period tie and the Vegas Golden Knights won the Pacific…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[1598,762,198,38256,5,348,4188,1326,1040,533,4,10617,3494,3492,47087,10616,48059,50837,2686,234,5318,4186,51,893],"class_list":{"0":"post-553655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-kraken","8":"tag-brayden-mcnabb","9":"tag-bruce-cassidy","10":"tag-edmonton","11":"tag-golden-knights-kraken-score","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-john-tortorella","14":"tag-kraken","15":"tag-las-vegas","16":"tag-mark-stone","17":"tag-mitch-marner","18":"tag-nhl","19":"tag-package-100024-ap-online","20":"tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","21":"tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","22":"tag-product-32550-ap-online-hockey-game-stories","23":"tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","24":"tag-product-40798-ap-nevada-sports-only","25":"tag-product-40820-ap-washington-state-sports-only","26":"tag-seattle","27":"tag-seattle-kraken","28":"tag-seattlekraken","29":"tag-shane-wright","30":"tag-utah","31":"tag-vancouver"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553655","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=553655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}