The Vegas Golden Knights kicked off their road trip with a 6-3 clunker against the Carolina Hurricanes at PNC Arena.
The clubs were tied at 1-1 after one, but an explosive second period by the Canes gave the home team a three-goal lead, which they extended further in the final 20 minutes.
Vegas trailed 6-1 until scoring twice in the final 1:24 of the game.
For the first time this season, a goalie change was made for reasons other than injury, as Logan Thompson was yanked after giving up goal No. 6, an unassisted tally by Brady Skjei at 4:44 of the third period. A turnover at the blue line allowed Skjei to skate in unopposed, and he beat Thompson short-side to end his night.
It was the Hurricanes’ second goal in the third period, with the first coming just 10 seconds into the frame.
It marked the first time Thompson surrendered six goals in a game; he finished the night with 22 saves on 28 shots for a .786 save percentage. Jiri Patera, who was recalled for the road trip due to the injury to Adin Hill, stopped all 10 shots he faced in relief.
For the second game in a row, the Golden Knights gave up multiple power-play goals. The Ottawa Senators went 2-for-5 Sunday in Vegas, and the Hurricanes went a perfect 3-for-3, scoring a power-play tally in each period.
Carolina opened the scoring with one of those three, as Andrei Svechnikov’s snipe beat Thompson through traffic 10:27 into the game.
The only Vegas goal in the first 58:36 came less than three minutes later. William Carrier went to the net and was rewarded with his fourth of the season to reset the score.
Things unraveled in the second period, starting with a Jordan Staal goal 4:36 into the middle frame; Thompson had no chance on the play, as a seeing-eye pass found Staal alone for a backdoor tap-in.
From there, the Hurricanes added two more in the second and two more in the third for a stretch of five unanswered goals.
One came at the tail end of an extended shift that kept Vegas hemmed in its end; Jesperi Kotkaniemi collected his own rebound and beat Thompson to make it 3-1 just past the midway mark of the second.
Michael Bunting scored 2:28 later to make it a 4-1 game. It was Carolina’s second power-play goal of the night, and it created true separation in the game.
Down three, the Golden Knights needed to come out with a Herculean effort in the third. Instead, Vegas took a penalty just four seconds into the period, and it took Carolina six seconds to take advantage. Seth Jarvis made it 5-1 in the blink of an eye for Carolina’s third power-play goal of the night.
Once again, the Hurricanes beat Vegas to a puck in front of the net, putting home a rebound for an easy strike.
Skjei scored less than five minutes later to give Carolina a five-goal lead.
The Golden Knights scored two goals late in the third period, as Jack Eichel found twine at 18:36, and Carrier added his second of the night with just 31 seconds remaining.
But the game was already well out of reach.
This was a game where nothing went right for the Golden Knights. They had particular trouble exiting the zone, but all facets of execution were off.
“At the end of the day, it’s not always about the other team, it’s about us,” Jonathan Marchessault said. “We didn’t execute, we didn’t support each other, we made our life a little more complicated, and tonight we needed a more simple game.”
The Golden Knights were completely outplayed in the second period, as the Hurricanes continued to push and push; the Golden Knights simply had no answer for Carolina’s forecheck.
“We were sloppy,” Marchessault said. “It’s not about X’s and O’s tonight, it’s just that our effort was miserable.”
Vegas’ top line had a particularly rough night against the Staal, Jesper Fast and Jordan Martinook line. Before Vegas’ late goals, Eichel, Mark Stone and Ivan Barbashev trailed 14-1 in Corsi, 8-4 in shots and gave up two goals.
Eichel managed to extend his point streak to 11 games with his 15th goal of the season (originally credited to Nicolas Hague), but his line was taken out of the equation by the Staal unit. Staal, himself, held a 16-1 edge in Corsi when Eichel was on the ice.
But in the end, special teams was the deciding factor in the lopsided outcome; Vegas lost that battle 3-0.
The power play went 0-for-4, with three of those opportunities coming in the first two periods. Converting on any one of those could have changed the game.
More significantly, the penalty kill went 0-for-3, marking the first time Vegas yielded three power-play goals in a game this season.
Head coach Bruce Cassidy said Vegas’ effort on the penalty kill was not good enough.
“We didn’t do a good enough job getting in shooting lanes, pushing them farther away from our net or getting the stop, or all of the above,” he said.
Marchessault also discussed the penalty kill, saying that Vegas needed a big kill on the Hurricanes’ fourth goal.
“They managed to get a greasy rebound there, and good for them,” he said, referring to Bunting’s goal that made it 4-1. “They were hard in front of our net, they played well, and their power play came out big tonight, and we had no response.”
The Golden Knights have given up five power-play goals in the last two games, and they have surrendered at least four goals in four of their last five. The difference between Sunday’s 6-3 win and Tuesday’s 6-3 loss was that Vegas won the special-teams battle 3-2 against Ottawa and lost 3-0 to Carolina.
“You’re not winning if you get outscored 3-0 on special teams,” Cassidy said.
Tuesday’s stumble marked the first time this season that Cassidy made a goalie change by choice, though he said it was a team-wide issue.
“I don’t like your backup to go in for mop-up duty,” he said. “It means you haven’t played well enough. So for [Patera], it’s good to get any game action because he hasn’t played a lot. … For us, we want to play better and have our starting goalie in there from start to finish, and hopefully with a ‘W’ at the end.”
The Golden Knights, now 21-7-5, will look to turn the page.
“We won last year, we’re still winning this year, we’re a pretty good team still, so I have no problem with my team responding,” Marchessault said. “I have a lot of confidence in our team, and that’s always going to be the case as long as I play here.”
Vegas will go head-to-head against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday before returning to Sunrise, Florida to take on the Panthers on Saturday.
Statistics courtesy of NHL.com and Natural Stat Trick.
(Photo of Michael Bunting celebrating his goal: James Guillory-USA TODAY Sports)