The Vegas Golden Knights fell 3-2 to the Dallas Stars in Game 5 at American Airlines Center in Dallas, and the reigning Stanley Cup Champs will now face elimination in Friday’s Game 6 to be played at T-Mobile Arena.
Vegas dropped a pivotal Game 4 on home ice to head back on the road to face the Stars, and the general thought was that the team needed to be a bit more aggressive, it needed to get going earlier, and just outwork Dallas in general. Head coach Bruce Cassidy shook things up by making a change in goal by giving Adin Hill a start in goal, and he also dressed Pavel Dorofeyev and Ben Hutton over Keegan Kolesar and Zach Whitecloud.
Mark Stone got Vegas off and running with a power play goal just 4 minutes into the game, but the Stars responded with a goal of their own just 62 seconds later to tie things up at 1. Dallas continued to push the pace, and they found the back of the net again, this time on the power play, just 2:02 after Evgenii Dadonov’s goal.
Vegas would push to get another goal 4:27 later when William Carrier worked his way off the boards to the front of the net, and unfortunately that was the last time the Golden Knights would find the back of the net.
Both sides failed to score in the 7:29 after Carrier’s goal, and they played most of the 2nd period tied 2-2. Alex Pietrangelo took a needless roughing penalty when he backhanded Tyler Seguin in the face after coming together along the boards, and Jason Robertson made sure he paid for his transgression and wristed one past Hill to make it 3-2 Stars.
From that point onward, the Stars pulled away in terms of generating expected goals and controlling the play, and the Golden Knights were unable to match them.
Robertson’s power-play wrister was the final goal of the game, and although Vegas tried to mount a comeback in the 3rd, Chandler Stephenson’s mini breakaway ended up being their best scoring chance, and Jake Oettinger stood tall again to secure another victory to push the Golden Knights to the brink of elimination.
Special teams played a factor again, as Vegas went 1/3 on the power play, and Dallas went 2/4. The Pietrangelo penalty that led to the game-winning goal was brutal, and he really hasn’t looked himself this series which just makes his dumb penalties that much more frustrating.
Vegas will play for their playoff lives on Friday, and they need to win, and again on Sunday if they want to move on to the next round of the playoffs.