LAS VEGAS \u2013 The Vegas Golden Knights welcomed the NHL\u2019s newest team to the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Sunday night at T-Mobile Arena, bruising the Utah Mammoth with physicality and late goals to take Game 1 of their first-round series 4-2.<\/p>\n
In its first playoff game since relocating, Utah showed well for the majority of the game. Vegas kept applying pressure and physicality, and eventually broke through with two third-period goals for its 17th come-from-behind win of the season.<\/p>\n
The teams traded blows in an incredibly physical opening period, but it was 21-year-old Logan Cooley who made the best play. Cooley raced up the ice alone in the waning seconds and bought time for his teammates to catch up. He dished a pass, then found open ice to unleash a one-timer into the Vegas net for a beautiful goal in his playoff debut.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights tied the game with a greasy, playoff-style goal by veteran forward Colton Sissons early in the second period. He fought his way into the blue paint and jammed the puck over the goal line to tie it, but Utah answered quickly with a fortunate goal for Kevin Stenlund. Vegas goalie Carter Hart went behind his net to stop a rimmed puck, but missed it. Stenlund quickly threw it on net, and it deflected off Hart, off defenseman Kaedan Korczak, and into the net to put Utah back ahead 2-1.<\/p>\n
Vegas took control late in the game with third-period goals by captain Mark Stone and fourth-line center Nic Dowd. The speed advantage the Mammoth enjoyed in the early stages of the game faded late. Vegas\u2019 unrelenting physicality seemed to take its toll, and the result was the Golden Knights spending more and more time in the offensive zone as the night wore on.<\/p>\n
Stone great for Vegas<\/p>\n
Coming off perhaps the best offensive season of his 14-year NHL career, with 73 points in 60 games, Vegas\u2019 captain rolled that form straight into the postseason.<\/p>\n
Stone was dominant throughout the night, regularly making the benign plays like winning board battles and stick checks in the neutral zone that kept the Golden Knights the territorial advantage whenever he was on the ice.<\/p>\n
Stone\u2019s best play of the night came on the power play midway through the third period. He broke the penalty kill\u2019s structure down with a perfect seam pass to Mitch Marner, who was streaking to the net. Then Stone crashed the crease to find a rebound off Marner\u2019s shot and buried it into a wide-open net to tie the game 2-2.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no question Vegas goes as Stone does, and he\u2019s one of the biggest reasons for its hot finish to the regular season. If he can maintain this level of play, the Golden Knights are a true threat to come out of the West.<\/p>\n
Depth scoring on both sides<\/p>\n
Getting goals from the bottom six forwards becomes even more important in the postseason, when teams work to shut down the opposing stars, and the depth forwards for both Vegas and Utah got off to a good start on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Vegas\u2019 fourth line struck first, getting the Golden Knights on the board with a goal scored by Sissons and assisted by Cole Smith and Brayden McNabb. That\u2019s not exactly the names you\u2019d expect to combine for the first goal of the postseason, but they threw the puck on net, and Sissons bullied his way into the blue paint to push it over the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey play in that area, right? Underneath the hashmarks,\u201d Vegas coach John Tortorella said of his fourth line. \u201cThey do all of the little things. I\u2019m comfortable playing them against anybody, and they got rewarded tonight. They gave us a spark.\u201d<\/p>\n
Utah\u2019s fourth-line center, Stenlund, scored the game\u2019s next goal, with assists going to bottom-pair defensemen Sean Durzi and Ian Cole.<\/p>\n
Then Dowd \u2014 Vegas\u2019 only fourth-liner to not pitch in on the first goal \u2014 deflected a shot past Vejmelka midway through the third period to give the Golden Knights their first lead of the game. The bottom-six production is a great sign for new coach John Tortorella, who opted to load up his top line with Stone, Marner and Jack Eichel to begin this series.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think in the playoffs there\u2019s not a lot of space out there,\u201d Dowd said. \u201cTeams get really good at defending. It\u2019s hard to score goals. It\u2019s hard to get shots.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cooley shines in postseason debut<\/p>\n
In a physical game often referred to as \u201cbig-boy hockey,\u201d the 21-year-old from Pittsburgh, PA., made his share of plays. Cooley led all Mammoth forwards in ice time and generated more shots on goal than anyone on the team.<\/p>\n
While there wasn\u2019t much space for playmaking on the ice, Cooley used his feet to create time for himself and his linemates. He was certainly a bright spot for Utah moving forward in this series, as he continues to adapt to playoff hockey.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was on a mission,\u201d Utah coach Andr\u00e9 Tourigny said. \u201cHe was really good. He and his line played a solid game. You guys know how competitive he is, and he just put it on display.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cooley\u2019s play on the game\u2019s opening goal was obviously the biggest highlight, but he made clever little plays throughout the game that helped his line hang onto possession. He was one of the very few Utah players whose on-ice shot numbers weren\u2019t underwater.<\/p>\n
Playoff Barbashev arrived on time<\/p>\n
Vegas power forward Ivan Barbashev had a solid regular season with a career-high 61 points, but he wasn\u2019t a physical force quite as often as we\u2019re used to seeing. That changed as soon as the puck dropped for the playoffs, as he was steamrolling everything that moved in the opening period of Sunday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to play like that for 82 games,\u201d Barbashev said. \u201cWhen the playoffs come, I think it matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barbashev laid hit after hit, helping the Golden Knights establish a forecheck and control possession over the first half of the game. He crushed Utah defenseman Ian Cole in the corner with a clean hit to the body after he sent a pass up the ice, and was a constant presence in front of the Utah crease.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look at him, Cole Smith and (Keegan) Kolesar, and they\u2019re kind of prototypical playoff guys,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cThey do those things. He had some good hits tonight. I thought he gave us some good minutes, just doing some little things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Appropriately, Barbashev iced the game with a long-distance shot that found the empty net just moments after Utah pulled Vejmelka for an extra attacker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2013 The Vegas Golden Knights welcomed the NHL\u2019s newest team to the Stanley Cup Playoffs on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5,4,51,5290,232,3154,5291,5289,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-557103","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-utah-mammoth","14":"tag-utahhc","15":"tag-utahhockeyclub","16":"tag-vegas-golden-knights"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116441281121074615","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557103","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=557103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}