The Vegas Golden Knights (8-4-6) suffered their sixth overtime loss of the season in a 3-2 decision against the Minnesota Wild (9-7-4) Sunday night at Grand Casino Arena.
With just 10 seconds left in the extra frame, Kirill Kaprizov scored the game-winner on the power play after a questionable call on Shea Theodore.
The Golden Knights scored two power-play goals, but it wasn’t enough to come away victorious.
Vegas earned three of a possible four points in the weekend back-to-back set after defeating St. Louis on Saturday.
Minnesota opened the scoring less than five minutes into the first period, as Joel Eriksson Ek beat Carl Lindbom off a great feed from Mats Zuccarello to give the home team the 1-0 advantage.
But the Golden Knights evened things up at 15:14 on the power play. Tomas Hertl helped Jack Eichel win a board battle and got the puck to Mitch Marner at the point. Marner skated in and made an intelligent play to force a rebound off Filip Gustavsson’s pad, which set up a tap-in goal for Pavel Dorofeyev. It was Dorofeyev’s 11th of the season and seventh on the man-advantage, which is tied for second in the NHL.
Marner’s primary assist was his 20th point of the year, making him the fastest Golden Knight to reach 20 points in franchise history, doing so in just 18 contests.
The Wild grabbed their second lead of the night in the second period. Vegas struggled with Minnesota’s forecheck, and a turnover behind the net resulted in a soft goal for Yakov Trenin, who slipped the puck under Lindbom’s pads at 9:05.
Lindbom did make a huge save later in the frame on Vinnie Hinostroza, who was all alone in front, as well as an underrated stop on Kaprizov with traffic in front.
The Golden Knights trailed 2-1 going into the third period.
For the second time in three games, Reilly Smith found the back of the net. His third of the season came on the power play and knotted things up at 2-2 at 6:35 of the third.
It was Vegas’ second power-play tally of the night and third in this back-to-back. It also was a rare conversion by the second unit.
The Wild didn’t have a shot on goal for the final nine minutes of the third period, but neither team was able to score the go-ahead goal.
Chances were limited in overtime, though Vegas did have a promising opportunity when Marner had a breakaway and left a drop pass for a wide-open Theodore. However, Matt Boldy used his stick to prevent Theodore from getting a shot off, which would later be a point of contention for head coach Bruce Cassidy.
After the game, Cassidy said that Boldy’s defensive play was “as obvious as it gets for a hook,” but no call was made.
The reason for Cassidy’s frustration was the fact that Theodore was then called for hooking with just 29 seconds left in overtime.
Cassidy was visibly frustrated with the call. In fact, the Vegas bench boss clapped sarcastically at the officials.
“That probably wasn’t my best moment,” Cassidy said after the game, “but I just felt like there was an obvious hook on Theodore, so if your standard’s gonna be you’re gonna let it go, then let it go.”
The call on Theodore led to Minnesota’s fourth power play of the night, and Kaprizov beat Lindbom from the right circle to end the game. Vegas was 10 seconds away from a shootout.
“I just thought it was a real poor call on [Theodore] if you’re gonna let the other one go,” Cassidy said.
However, Cassidy said the Golden Knights didn’t “get the job done on the kill,” starting with losing the faceoff. “I think we knew the puck was going over there, and I think we tried to push Kaprizov as far as we could away from the net, and he still found a way to get it in. So it’s a tough one.”
Though Lindbom did get over, Kaprizov’s one-timer still made it past him. In the end, Lindbom stopped 24 of 27 shots for an .857 save percentage; he remains winless this season. Aside from the second goal, Lindbom made some key stops and gave his team a chance to win.
It was a disappointing finish for the Golden Knights.
“It was a tight game,” Cassidy said. “The way it ended for us leaves a sour taste in your mouth. But there’s parts of the game we played really well, and I think [the Wild] would say the same about their game. And there’s parts where we needed to find more offense at 5-on-5, and we weren’t able to do that, so we’ll look at that. I give credit to Minnesota in that regard. It was a little easier to find offense last night [in St. Louis]. Today was a lot tougher, but that’s where our power play did pick us up. But it wasn’t enough.”
Despite the late power-play goal for the Wild, Vegas still won the special teams battle for the second game in a row. The Golden Knights went 2-for-4 on the man-advantage and 3-for-4 on the penalty kill, limiting the Wild to very few chances on their first three power plays of the night.
That being said, Vegas’ play at 5-on-5 left much to be desired, though neither club was able to generate much. The Wild ultimately outshot the Golden Knights 27-25, including 3-0 in overtime.
“Tonight, to battle back again against a team that knows how to put teams away when they have the lead was good, we just didn’t get the last one,” Cassidy said.
But it’s hard to ignore the fact that Vegas has six overtime losses in 18 games.
The Golden Knights lost 6-5 in a shootout in the home opener against Los Angeles; of the other six games that reached extra time, Vegas has won just one of them (a 4-3 overtime win against San Jose back on Oct. 9).
Since then, Vegas has lost 2-1 to Seattle, 2-1 to Tampa Bay, 4-3 to the Ducks, 4-3 to the Islanders and now 3-2 to the Wild. Considering the amount of skill in this lineup, even with the injuries, this track record is puzzling.
Cassidy said he felt the Golden Knights outplayed the Ducks and Islanders. “I think they got goals that were stoppable pucks,” he said, “and we hit some posts and had some looks. Tonight we didn’t really have anything in overtime. I don’t think either team did.”
Cassidy cited puck management as the issue in the earlier games but didn’t have an answer as to why there have been so many.
“I would like to think we’d be able to turn the corner on these,” he said. “We’ll see the next time we’re in one, I guess.”
The Golden Knights will return home to face the Rangers on Tuesday before hitting the road again for a three-game stretch in Utah, Anaheim and back to Utah.