The Vegas Golden Knights opened the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs with a 4-2 victory over the Utah Mammoth in Game 1 of their first-round series on Sunday night at T-Mobile Arena. Vegas leads the series, 1-0.<\/p>\n
HOW IT WENT DOWN TOP PERFORMERS Nic Dowd: Dowd recorded the game-winning goal, boosting his career postseason goal total to five.<\/p>\n Carter Hart: Hart posted a .939 save percentage in the victory and has a perfect record since returning from injury on April 2.<\/p>\n Mark Stone: Stone pulled the game even on Sunday night with his 42nd postseason goal.<\/p>\n SERIES AT A GLANCEAll times PST VGK STATS OF THE KNIGHT Reilly Smith<\/a> and Brayden McNabb<\/a> each appeared in their 100th playoff game as Golden Knights\u00a0on Sunday night.<\/p>\n The Golden Knights recorded their 63rd playoff win, which is the most in the NHL since the franchise entered the league in 2017-18.<\/p>\n The Golden Knights improved to 12-7 in the first game of a best-of-seven playoff series.<\/p>\n Vegas nearly doubled Utah’s hits (30) with 52 total in the win.<\/p>\n ATTENDANCE: 17,979<\/p>\n LOOKING AHEAD
Logan\u00a0Cooley struck first to give the Mammoth a 1-0 lead with 11 seconds remaining in the opening frame.\u00a0Colton Sissons<\/a> pulled the game even, 1-1, at 3:44 in the middle period when Cole Smith<\/a> backhanded the puck from the goal line toward the slot, and Sissons fought to poke the puck in the net for the game-tying score. Less than two minutes later, Kevin Stenlund scored to give Utah their second lead of the night. Mark Stone<\/a> tied the game, 2-2, with a power-play goal at 5:33 in the final frame. Mitch Marner<\/a> launched a shot on goal, and Tomas Hertl<\/a> fed the loose puck to Stone, who fired it into a wide-open net. At 7:20 in the third period, Nic Dowd<\/a> netted the go-ahead goal to give the Golden Knights a 3-2 edge. Dowd redirected a dish from Noah Hanifin<\/a> past Karel Vejmelka for his first\u00a0playoff goal as a Golden Knight.\u00a0Ivan Barbashev<\/a> sealed the victory for Vegas with an empty-netter, and Hanifin recorded his second assist of the night with 1:39 remaining in the game. Carter Hart<\/a> turned aside 31 out of 33 shots to lift the Golden Knights to their first win of the series.<\/p>\n
Colton Sissons: Sissons scored a game-tying goal and picked up a helper to bring his career playoff point total to 27 (11G, 16A).<\/p>\n
Game 1: Sunday, April 19 at 7 p.m. | T-Mobile Arena | Highlights<\/a>
Game 2: Tuesday, April 21 at 6:30 p.m. | T-Mobile Arena |\u00a0BUY TICKETS<\/a>
Game 3: Friday, April 24 at 6:30 p.m. | Delta Center
Game 4: Monday, April 27 \u2013 Time TBD | Delta Center
Game 5: (if necessary): Wednesday, April 29 \u2013 Time TBD |\u00a0T-Mobile Arena |\u00a0BUY TICKETS<\/a>
Game 6: (if necessary): Friday, May 1 \u2013 Time TBD | Delta Center
Game 7: (if necessary): Sunday, May 3 \u2013 Time TBD |\u00a0T-Mobile Arena |\u00a0BUY TICKETS<\/a><\/p>\n
Mark Stone scored his 37th playoff goal as a Golden Knight, which is the most postseason goals in franchise history.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights and Utah Mammoth will meet in Game 2 of the series on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at T-Mobile Arena. Catch the action on Vegas 34 in Las Vegas, ESPN2 nationally, or listen on FOX Sports Las Vegas 94.7\/1340 and Deportes Vegas 1460.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vegas Golden Knights opened the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs with a 4-2 victory over the Utah Mammoth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5,4,51,5290,232,5291,5289],"class_list":{"0":"post-556811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-hockey-club","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-utah","11":"tag-utah-hc","12":"tag-utah-hockey-club","13":"tag-utahhc","14":"tag-utahhockeyclub"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116438389311529299","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556811","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=556811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}