Tomas Hertl scored the go-ahead goal midway through the third period and Mark Stone and William Karlsson each had a goal and an assist as the Vegas Golden Knights rallied from an early 3-0 deficit to defeat the Colorado Avalanche, 5-3, on Sunday night in Las Vegas to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven Western Conference finals.
Keegan Kolesar and Brett Howden also scored goals, and Mitch Marner and Kaedan Korczak each had two assists for Vegas, which needs just one more win to clinch its third trip to the Stanley Cup Final in its nine years as a franchise. Game 4 is Tuesday in Las Vegas.
Carter Hart finished with 32 saves for the Golden Knights, who rallied from a three-goal deficit to win a playoff game for the first time in 20 tries in franchise history.
Jack Drury scored a shorthanded goal, Devon Toews had two assists, and Nazem Kadri and Gabriel Landeskog also scored goals for Colorado. Scott Wedgewood made 18 saves.
Colorado, already in a deep hole after losing the first two games of the series at home, jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the opening 7:03 on goals by Landeskog, who tucked in a rebound of a Toews shot inside the right post, and Kadri, who fired in a wrist shot from the high slot past Hart’s blocker side off a pass by Martin Necas.
Pavel Dorofeyev then punched in a rebound on the power play for the Golden Knights but the goal was quickly waived off because officials ruled he used his hand, wrapped around his stick, to guide the puck into the net. After a lengthy video review, the initial ruling was upheld.
Forty-three seconds later, the Avalanche then extended the lead to 3-0 on Drury’s first career playoff short-handed goal when he slipped a backhand shot around Hart’s left pad at the end of a breakaway.
Vegas, outshot 16-7 in the first period, needed only 12:46 into the second period to tie the game at 3.
Stone, back after missing five games with a lower-body injury, made it 3-1 just 19 seconds into the period when he redirected Marner’s pass inside the right post for his fourth playoff goal.
Karlsson followed with his first playoff goal, firing in a rebound from the edge of the right circle over Wedgewood’s glove.
Kolesar then tied it when he deflected a Dylan Coghlan shot off the right post and then tapped the rebound into an open net for his first goal and point of this year’s playoffs.
Things went from bad to worse a few minutes later when Colorado center Nathan MacKinnon, who led the league with 53 regular-season goals, crumbled to the ice after getting hit on his right knee by a Shea Theodore one-timer he was blocking. MacKinnon saw limited time on the ice the rest of the game.
Hertl then gave Vegas its first lead at the 8:21 mark of the third period, breaking down the left wing and then cutting inside defenseman Sam Malinski and snapping a backhand shot past Wedgewood’s blocker side for what became the game-winner.
The Avalanche pulled Wedgewood for an extra attacker with 1:45 to go and Howden sealed the win with an empty-netter with 57.9 seconds left, his 10th goal of the playoffs.
