In Edmonton, Reilly Smith struck for the overtime winner at 7:13 of the extra session to give the Vegas Golden Knights a 4-3 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday afternoon.
The win gives Vegas a 2-0 series lead.
“It started the shift before that (with Nick Cousins, Nicolas Roy, Alex Tuch),” Smith said. “All five guys did a good job cycling the puck, creating opportunities and kind of hemmed them into their zone. Cousins did a great job of creating time and [my linemate Paul Stastny] made a great pass. I was fortunate enough it took a great bounce off my stick.”
Robin Lehner made 22 saves to beat his old team for the second straight game.
“[Smith’s] been real impressive,” Golden Knights head coach Peter DeBoer said. “He was great before the [pause] but I think he’s come back from the pause with a lot of confidence, a lot of energy. He’s really driving a lot of plays and important plays. He has that ability to get hot.
“He’s done it before and he’s in one of those places right now, so we’ll keep that going as long as we can.”
Paul Stastny], Tomas Nosek and Mark Stone scored in regulation for Vegas.
“When we’re playing our game, we can win different ways,” Stastny said. “When [DeBoer] came in (as coach Jan. 15), he brought a new sense of life into us and I think we changed a few things. All of sudden, we’re spending less time in the defense zone and playing more as a team. We found different ways to win with different guys. We play a good team game and there aren’t a lot of teams that can play our style for 60 minutes … it’s all about playing the way we want to play.”
Kirby Dach, Dominik Kubalik and Dylan Strome were the strikers for Chicago.
“I thought we were playing really well the first two periods, and for whatever reason it just seemed that they came out better than us in the third,” Chicago’s Patrick Kane (three assists) said. “I don’t know if we thought it was going to be a little bit easier than it was, especially after we tied it up (3-3). They’re a good team, they’re going to fight back, and they carried the play for most of the third, so we didn’t generate much.”
[WATCH: All Blackhawks vs. Golden Knights highlights]
Corey Crawford made 35 saves in the loss.
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