The Vegas Golden Knights looked down and out after surrendering three goals in the third period against their expansion rival the Seattle Kraken, but rallied late to send the game to overtime and emerged victorious following Jack Eichel’s 20th goal of the season.
Both sides played a relatively low-event first period which remained tied at 0, and things picked up for the Golden Knights in the second period. Andre Burakovsky did open the scoring 4:14 into the second frame, but 2:22 later Jonathan Marchessault picked up his 36th goal of the season on the power play to tie things up.
Marchessault has generated offense at an elite clip over the last month, and has scored 11 goals and added 5 assists for 16 points over the last 13 games stretching back to February 12th.
Vegas scored their second and final goal of the period with 5 minutes to go, and Pavel Dorofeyev notched his 9th goal of the season to give the team a 2-1 lead which they took into the final 20 minutes of regulation.
Unfortunately for Vegas, they were sent back to square one when Matty Beniers scored just 1:55 into the period. Brandon Tanev added a goal of his own 3:22 later to make it 3-2, and Oliver Bjorkstrand added another one for good measure at 11:30 to give the Kraken a 4-2 lead with just about half a period to go.
Fortunately for the Golden Knights, original misfit William Karlsson started the turnaround with a response goal 57 seconds after Bjorkstrand’s to give his team a fighting chance, and fight the Golden Knights did as they searched for one more answer.
As an old book once said, “seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” and that’s exactly what happened for the Golden Knights who found what they worked for when Marchessault scored his second goal of the game to tie things at 4-4 with 17 seconds in regulation.
The team continued the momentum into overtime, and Eichel sent the Seattle crowd home sad with an overtime winner with 1:59 remaining.
Adin Hill made 26 saves in the win, and despite having an off night by his standards, he kept Vegas in the game as they worked to complete a comeback. Noah Hanifin also had a nice night, and was the team’s top performing defender analytically.
Things have not gone great as of late for the Golden Knights as they are 3-6-1 in their last 10 games played, but Tuesday’s win was the squad’s second in a row to improve them to 35-23-7 on the season. Vegas now has 77 points in 65 games, and sits 6 points of the Minnesota Wild who are chasing down the second Wild Card spot. The Los Angeles Kings are third in the Pacific with 77 points in 64 games, and that is ideally the spot the Golden Knights will look to reclaim to add some security for their playoff aspirations.
The Golden Knights return to action on Thursday vs. the Calgary Flames, and Hanifin will make his return to Calgary for his first game since joining Vegas.