Jonathan Marchessault scored three goals for his sixth career hat trick, and Logan Thompson made 28 saves as the Vegas Golden Knights defeated the Winnipeg Jets 5-2 on Thursday night.
William Karlsson and Ivan Barbashev also scored for the Golden Knights, who improved to 10-0-1 in front of an announced crowd of 17,878. This makes them the 13th team in NHL history to record a season-opening point streak of at least 11 games.
After three consecutive overtime games, including two shootouts, the Golden Knights secured their first multi-goal margin victory in five games.
“It was definitely a tough stretch the past few games, but when you put in the work, sometimes you get rewarded,” Marchessault said. “Every night, somebody else is stepping in. That’s our mentality last year, and it was good to feel that I could help my teammates tonight.”
Kyle Connor and Alex Iafallo scored for the Jets, while Connor Hellebuyck made 21 saves.
Karlsson opened the scoring for Vegas when he raced down the left side and one-timed a slick backhand pass from Pavel Dorofeyev past Hellebuyck midway through the first period. This goal extended Karlsson’s point streak to eight games, during which he has four goals and 10 points.
The teams exchanged goals in the second period. Winnipeg tied the score when Connor skated from the blue line, through the left circle, across the slot, and lasered a backhand into the net at 6:17.
Less than a minute later, Vegas responded on a power play. Thompson fired a stretch pass to the blue line, where Mark Stone sent the puck ahead to Marchessault, who finished his breakaway at the 7-minute mark. It was Thompson’s first career assist.
“We’ve been working on that at practice, just with the goalies making a quick up, and it worked tonight,” Thompson said. “I hit Stoney, and Stoney makes a beautiful pass to Marchy, and Marchy finishes it. So it was perfect tonight.”
Shortly thereafter, on another power play, Barbashev pushed Vegas’ lead to 3-1 at 8:38, easily sending the puck past an out-of-position Hellebuyck.
Iafallo closed the gap to one goal at 1:51 of the third period, scoring a power-play goal with a second deflection off Cole Perfetti’s initial redirect.
Marchessault scored his second goal of the night less than 4 minutes later, extending Vegas’ lead back to two goals. He secured his hat trick with an empty-net goal with 2:52 to go, marking his fifth hat trick with Vegas and his first since May 14 in the playoffs.
“We got real sloppy there for the last 10 minutes of that second period,” said Winnipeg interim coach Scott Arniel. “We got ourselves going again in the third, had some good shifts, scored that power-play goal, made it 3-2. We were hoping to make it better. And then another tough one.”
The Jets, who lost their third straight game, are 2-1-2 since Arniel stepped in for coach Rick Bowness, who is absent.
UP NEXT
- Jets: At Arizona on Saturday.
- Golden Knights: Host Colorado on Saturday.
