SALT LAKE CITY (AP) \u2014 Mitch Marner had two goals and an assist, Carter Hart made 21 saves and Vegas Golden Knights beat the Utah Mammoth 5-1 on Friday night in Game 6 to wrap up the first-round series.<\/p>\n
Vegas will face Anaheim in the second round. The Ducks advanced Thursday night with a 5-2 home victory over Edmonton in Game 6.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights have surged since John Tortorella took over as coach from the fired Bruce Cassidy, closing the regular season 7-0-1 after the change. They ripped off three straight wins after Utah took a 2-1 series lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what I hoped for,\u201d Marner said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more work to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marner had two goals and five assists in the series. Friday was the first multi-goal playoff game for the Vegas forward since April 20, 2023, against Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was his best game of the series. He just looked comfortable,\u201d Tortorella said.<\/p>\n
Brett Howden opened the scoring with his fourth goal of the series, all coming over the last three games. Colton Sissons added a third-period goal for Vegas soon after Utah\u2019s Kailer Yamamoto cut it to 2-1. Cole Smith capped the scoring with an empty-netter on the heels of Marner converting a power play for his second goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been here before,\u201d Vegas captain Mark Stone said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have the panic. Maybe some teams do. We can calm ourselves pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karel Vejmelka made 21 saves for Utah. The Mammoth led in the third period in each of the first five games before trailing the whole way in Game 6.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have that in my bingo card,\u201d Utah coach Andre Tourigny said. \u201cI was really confident we would go to Vegas tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Howden scored with 4:58 left in the first period. Marner\u2019s shot went to the right of the goal and rebounded out front for Howden to put a wrist shot home.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday night in Game 5, Howden scored the winner in the Golden Knights\u2019 5-4 double-overtime victory. Vegas also won 5-4 in overtime in Game 4 after getting two goals from him in regulation.<\/p>\n
Marner made it 2-0 with 45 seconds left in the second after Vegas had the puck in Utah\u2019s end for more than two minutes. He blasted a slap shot from the top of the right circle off Ian Cole\u2019s knee and into the net.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a couple opportunities in that same area that I had just missed on,\u201d Marner said. \u201cThat\u2019s why I just decided to quickly wind one up and see if I could get a clapper through.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NHL playoffs: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/stanley-cup<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SALT LAKE CITY (AP) \u2014 Mitch Marner had two goals and an assist, Carter Hart made 21 saves…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[9426,2666,7680,1741,762,2617,5,9110,348,1521,1326,1040,533,13257,4,292,1274,43,2583,1256,51,5290,232,3154,5291,5289,39],"class_list":["post-568208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-utah-hockey-club","tag-andre-tourigny","tag-arizona","tag-az-state-wire","tag-brett-howden","tag-bruce-cassidy","tag-california","tag-hockey","tag-ian-cole","tag-john-tortorella","tag-karel-vejmelka","tag-las-vegas","tag-mark-stone","tag-mitch-marner","tag-nevada","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-hockey","tag-nv-state-wire","tag-sports","tag-sports-transactions","tag-ut-state-wire","tag-utah","tag-utah-hc","tag-utah-hockey-club","tag-utah-mammoth","tag-utahhc","tag-utahhockeyclub","tag-vegas-golden-knights"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116527241794583881","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568208","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=568208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}