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Dismal start dooms Golden Knights in 5-3 loss to Marchessault, Predators

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It was a tale of two games for the Vegas Golden Knights, whose valiant comeback effort came up short in a 5-3 loss to the Nashville Predators Tuesday night at Bridgestone Arena.

It was the highly-anticipated first matchup against Original Misfit Jonathan Marchessault, but it was the former Conn Smythe winner who came away victorious against his former club.

To say Vegas got off to a slow start would be an extreme understatement; Vegas only played half a game.

As Bruce Cassidy put it after the game, “That’s probably the poorest we’ve played for 30 minutes in my two and a half years here.”

The Predators scored the first four goals of the contest and recorded 18 of the first 20 shots. Meanwhile, it took more than 26 minutes for the Golden Knights to register their first shot on goal from within the offensive zone.

Pavel Dorofeyev put the team on his back with the first hat trick of his career, but it was too little, too late for the Golden Knights, who have lost three out of their last four games and are now 29-12-3.

The first period was all Nashville, as the Predators scored two goals in the span of 2:22 and completely shut down the Golden Knights. Even when Jack Eichel had a partial breakaway near the end of the frame, Predators netminder Justus Annunen used a poke check to prevent Eichel from getting a shot off.

It was just that kind of period for the road team.

Steven Stamkos opened the scoring at 9:44, cashing in on a rebound following Marchessault’s wraparound bid.

Filip Forsberg followed suit, as the Swedish sniper continues to wreak havoc against the Golden Knights. Forsberg scored right off the draw to give Nashville a 2-0 lead at 12:06.

In the end, the Predators led 25-4 in shot attempts, 11-1 in shots, 12-2 in scoring chances and 6-1 in high-danger chances with a 90.36 percent expected goal share in the opening 20 minutes.

Things went from bad to worse at the start of the second, as the Predators outshot Vegas 8-1 and doubled their lead before the Golden Knights woke up.

Justin Barron launched a bomb of a slapshot past Ilya Samsonov at 5:29, and Stamkos added his second of the game just over three minutes later to make it a four-goal game.

Marchessault set up the backdoor play for Stamkos’ 14th of the year, which came 17 seconds after the expiration of a tripping minor on Dorofeyev.

But Dorofeyev made up for Vegas’ only penalty with his first goal of the game just 31 seconds after Nashville took a 4-0 lead.

He added his second of the night nearly five minutes later to cut the deficit to two.

It was his third power-play goal in the last two games.

Vegas came alive in the third period, outshooting the Predators 13-2. At 5-on-5, Vegas owned 98.53 percent of the expected goal share with a 26-3 lead in shot attempts and a 13-0 edge in scoring chances.

Dorofeyev completed the natural hat trick with his 19th goal of the season to make it a one-goal game with 4:40 remaining.

The Golden Knights continued to push, but Ryan O’Reilly ultimately sealed the win for Nashville with an empty-net goal with just two seconds on the clock.

When all was said and done, the Predators maintained negligible advantages in overall shot attempts (55-49) and shots (23-22) but finished with a 61.59 percent expected goal share despite trailing 26-19 in scoring chances.

The Golden Knights made things interesting, but only after digging themselves a hole too deep to climb out of.

Vegas may have been in control in the third, but the second chances were few and far between. Plus, the Golden Knights were equally (if not more so) invisible in the first half of the contest, which is the reason they left two points on the table.

“You can’t start against anybody the way we did,” Cassidy said.

Marchessault finished the game with an assist, a plus-two rating, one shot and one block in 17:07 in his first game against Vegas. The Predators have had a surprisingly rough campaign thus far, but Marchessault has points in six straight and in 14 out of his last 15, giving him 14 goals and 32 points in 43 games.

Dorofeyev’s career night was overshadowed by Vegas’ overall performance, but it’s worth noting that the 24-year-old Russian became the second-youngest player in franchise history to record a hat trick, trailing Dylan Coghlan, who was 23 when he lit the lamp three times in 2021.

Dorofeyev is also the first Golden Knight to score a natural hat trick since 2018-19. He has five goals in his last two games and has 19 through 44 games this season after potting 20 in the first 67 games of his career.

The Golden Knights will look to right the ship when they take on the Hurricanes (26-15-3) and Blackhawks (14-28-2) in a back-to-back set on Friday and Saturday.