Sports

/

ArcaMax

Golden Knights begin 1st road trip of season with win in Vancouver

Danny Webster, Las Vegas Review-Journal on

Published in Hockey

The Vegas Golden Knights would have liked a more lopsided score in their favor. The numbers and analytics would say they deserved better than a one-goal win.

They’ll take a 3-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks regardless. The Knights dominated the first two periods at Rogers Arena on Sunday. It was more than enough to win their first road game of the season.

The Knights (2-1-0) scored three times in the second period off goals from forwards Mitch Marner, Victor Olofsson and Marc Gatcomb. They outshot the Canucks 14-4 in that frame.

The Knights, outshot 8-2 in the third, withstood Vancouver’s push.

“I thought we were smart with our pucks,” Marner said. “We made the right decisions when we needed to.”

Goaltender Adin Hill stopped all eight shots in the third and finished with 17 saves in his first start of the season. Carter Hart had started the previous 27 games dating to last season.

The Knights won their eighth straight game against the Canucks and improved to 22-4-3 all-time.

“I loved our commitment to our game,” coach Ryan Craig said. “There were spurts where we had to stay committed. We stayed committed to the game and the gameplan.”

Marner played the patient game at 9:01, holding it long enough for Vancouver goaltender Kevin Lankinen to play out of his crease and score into an open net.

Olofsson, on his first shift with the top power play unit, took the pass from captain Mark Stone and also found the open net, taking a 2-1 lead.

The Knights finished 1 for 5 on the power play. The one goal came with the Knights returning to the five-forward unit.

Gatcomb responded 34 seconds after Hill gave up a sharp-angle goal to Jonathan Lekkerimaki with his first goal as a member of the Knights with 1:32 left in the second to restore the lead.

 

“Obviously the second goal, I’d like to have back,” Hill said. “But the guys responded well and scored the next shift, which was huge.”

The Knights outshot the Canucks 26-10 through two periods. They had an 11-1 edge in high-danger chances and 19-4 in scoring chances at 5 on 5 through 40 minutes, according to Natural Stat Trick.

It was a stark contrast compared to Friday against Anaheim when the Knights gave up three goals in the first seven minutes of the middle frame.

“We played as five,” defenseman Brayden McNabb said. “We were good in the neutral zone, took away time and space, created quite a bit in the o-zone. D-zone was pretty good, too.”

The Knights built off their third period against the Ducks with 12 shots in the opening 20 minutes. Five came on two power plays, but they failed to score.

Entering Sunday, the Knights allowed one power-play goal to the Canucks over the last seven meetings. Former Knights forward Paul Cotter made it two with a backdoor tap-in with 1:08 left for a 1-0 Vancouver lead.

Lankinen finished with 25 saves for the Canucks (2-2-0), who were playing the second night of a back-to-back after beating Calgary 4-1 at home on Saturday.

“I thought our first was good again tonight, but obviously giving up that power play goal,” Marner said. “Our mindset, we just wanted to come out and play a direct game, played behind them. …

“We wanted to make sure we were making them work through us, and I thought we did a good job in the second and third of that.”

________


©2026 Las Vegas Review-Journal. Visit reviewjournal.com.. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus