The Vegas Golden Knights weathered an early storm of pressure from the New York Rangers, and struck in succession in both the 1st and 2nd period to pickup two important points. The Rangers tested Logan Thompson and had a couple of prime opportunities around the net, but it was Jonathan Marchessault who opened the scoring with his 19th goal of the season at 11:35 of the 1st.
Just over 3 minutes later, Ivan Barbashev coincidentally redirected a feed from Nic Roy off his skates to give the team a 2-0 lead which Vegas took into the 1st intermission.
The Golden Knights and Rangers played a pretty low event 2nd period, but that changed after Braden Schneider took a peculiar penalty to put the Golden Knights on the power play. Mark Stone got the puck for Vegas and faked the Rangers’ penalty killers out and created a seam which Barbashev slipped right into before scoring his 2nd goal of the game at 17:59.
With the game 3-0 and a few minutes remaining in the period, the Rangers were on the ropes, and it took Keegan Kolesar just 25 seconds after Barbashev’s goal to tip in a shot from Kaedan Korczak to extend the lead to 4-0.
The Golden Knights entered the 3rd with a 4-0 lead which shrunk to 4-1 after Mika Zibanejad scored on the power play 40 seconds into the period, and another goal wouldn’t be scored for 17:52 at which point Brett Howden tucked home an empty-netter against his former club.
Barbashev was named 1st star of the game for his pair of goals, Logan Thompson took the 2nd star for stopping 29 of 30, and Nicolas Roy the 3rd star for a pair of assists as the team’s No. 2 center filling in for Jack Eichel.
Thompson kept the Golden Knights in it early, and that made a huge difference as you can see by the expected goals battle via MoneyPuck.
Had the Rangers converted on their initial flurry of chances in the first 10 minutes, there’s a very good chance the complexion of the games changes, because New York has been a very good team once they get rolling. We’ve also seen what happens when Vegas goes down early, and how they’ve found themselves in a hole they can’t dig out of.
In any case, that didn’t happen on Thursday, and the team should be happy with their performance against one of the better teams in the NHL. The team is off on Friday, and returns to action on Saturday evening against the Pittsburgh Penguins before heading to the New York tri-state area for games against the New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, and a rematch against the Rangers.