In Denver, Mikko Rantanen scored off the power pla with just over two minutes gone in 
overtime on Wednesday night, to give the Avalanche a 3-2 win and 2-0 series lead over the Vegas Golden Knights.
“It’s all over the League that if you slash the other guy’s stick out of his hands or break his stick, it’s always a penalty,” Rantanen said. “I’m a pretty strong guy too, so I can hold on to my stick, but that was a pretty hard slash. I don’t think I would purposely drop my stick in the [defensive zone].”
Reilly Smith was called for the slashing to set up the winner.
“Ah, just a soft call, but I can’t even blame the refs,” Vegas head coach Peter DeBoer said. “They’re fighting through the embellishment of grabbing your face or falling down or dropping your stick every period. So, you know, I can’t even blame the referee on it. They fooled them on it.”
Philipp Grubauer made 39 saves to earn the win for the Avs.
“‘Grubi’ bailed us out today,” Rantanen said. “He had a really, really good game. He kept us in the game. He is basically the reason why we got to OT, and our special teams stepped up there, but Grubi was awesome for sure, First Star of the game.”
Alec Martinez scored for Vegas, and Smith tied the game at 2-2 in the middle frame.
“It’s not easy to take when you lose in the playoffs,” DeBoer said. “I thought we deserved better. I really liked a lot of the things we did and our effort but got to find a way to bury one of those chances and win a game. They held serve at home; we’ve got to do the same.”
Brandon Saad and Tyson Jost were the Colorado strikers.
“[Girard] made a great pass up the middle where their [defenseman] got caught pinching, and I had some space on the way to the net,” Saad said. “It was a great heads-up play by him.
“We knew they were going to come out with a better effort tonight. Even though we didn’t play our best, it’s a great character win to kind of hold on and finish it off with the power play.”
Marc-Andre Fleury made 22 saves in the loss.
“I thought we played really well,” Vegas’ Mark Stone said. “We didn’t have a great start to the game but really kind of took over the game as it went on. I thought we kind of worried about our game a little bit more than we worried about them. We just came out and played really solid, but it stings no matter what.
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