Mark Stone tallied a goal and an assist as the Vegas Golden Knights surged to an early lead and held on to defeat the Ottawa Senators 5-4 on Thursday night, marking their sixth consecutive win.
Reilly Smith, Zach Whitecloud, Chandler Stephenson, and William Carrier also scored for Vegas, which led 5-1 midway through the second period. Logan Thompson made 42 saves.
“We just let them off the hook,” Stone said. “I think we just kind of thought the game was over. We started trying to make plays, and if you look at the goals we’re scoring, we’re getting on the forecheck, making them make turnovers, and then we fell into that trap and started doing it to ourselves.
“You definitely want to learn from it. That was not a perfect game from us by any means.”
Claude Giroux and Tim Stutzle each scored twice, and Brady Tkachuk contributed three assists for Ottawa, which has now lost four straight. Anton Forsberg allowed all five goals on 19 shots before being replaced midway through the second by Cam Talbot, who stopped all 13 in his season debut.
“If you play like the way we played in the second and third period, you’re going to win a lot of games,” Senators coach D.J. Smith said. “There’s no such thing as moral victories in sports, but you get that effort from the guys that we got tonight, and you’ll start winning a lot of hockey games.”
Down 5-1, Giroux scored his second goal of the night with 5 1/2 minutes left in the second period off a cross-ice pass from Jake Sanderson.
With less than two minutes remaining in the period, Thompson thought he had stopped a shot by Tkachuk, but the puck trickled through his pads, and Stutzle pushed it over the goal line to make it a two-goal game.
Ottawa pulled within one early in the third period when Stutzle took advantage of a Vegas turnover, played a give-and-go with Tkachuk, and scored his second goal of the night and third of the season.
Vegas had an opportunity to extend its lead with a 5-on-3 advantage lasting 59 seconds, but Talbot made two crucial saves for the Senators.
Stone put Vegas on the board first, picking up a loose puck in front and scoring his fourth goal just 1:22 into the game.
The Senators tied it less than three minutes later when Giroux, looking to go off on a line change, shot the puck from just over center ice, fooling Thompson.
“I’ve probably tried that over 500 times in my career, and it never went in,” Giroux said. “When it went in, it was overdue. I get pretty excited when I see a goal like that.”
Smith scored a power-play goal at 9:19 to put Vegas ahead, and Whitecloud made it 3-1 with 32 seconds left in the period, scoring his first of the season off a cross-crease pass from Stone.
Stephenson’s short-handed goal made it 4-1 for the Golden Knights at 5:15 of the second period. Carrier capitalized on a giveaway by Ottawa’s Alex DeBrincat, skated in alone on Forsberg, and beat him through the legs nearly five minutes later to give Vegas a four-goal lead, chasing Forsberg from the net.
BETWEEN THE PIPES
Forsberg began the night leading the NHL in shots faced (276) and saves (251).
UP NEXT
- Golden Knights: At Montreal on Saturday night in the third of a five-game trip.
- Senators: Host Philadelphia on Saturday night in the second of a three-game homestand.
