Ducks rally comes up short in loss to Vegas

In Anaheim, the Vegas Golden Knights held off a late game surge from the Ducks and  won, 5-4, on Friday night.

Troy Terry and Trevor Zegras scored for Anaheim after the Knights had taken a 5-2 lead in the middle frame.

“A divisional game, big point of the season, so it doesn’t feel great,” the Ducks’ Cam Fowler said.

Vegas’ Nicolas Roy hit for a double for the Ducks.

“At this time of the year, it’s very important to get as many points as we can,” Roy said. “We needed to bounce back from last game and we were able to do that.”

Laurent Brossoit made 20 saves in the Vegas win.

“In the first period, we didn’t manage the puck all that well,” Fowler said. “It seemed like we were a little bit sloppy, missing each other on the tape, turning it over too many times and just too many chances against in the second.”

The Golden Knights improved to 31-21-4.

“It was nice, some guys got off some streaks, like Nick Roy,” Vegas coach Peter DeBoer said. “He’d been snakebit for a while. We were due, some of those guys were due, and they went to the right places in order to score.”

Jakob Silfverberg and Nicolas Deslauriers also scored for Anaheim.

“We shot ourselves in the foot in the first part of the second [period],” Anaheim coach Dallas Eakins said. “In the third, what happened, it wasn’t that we got our game going, we quit turning pucks over in the neutral zone, simple as that.”

The Golden Knights’ Jonathan Marchessault opened the scoring with just 18 seconds gone in the first period.

“That sets the wrong tone for the team to give one up early [in the second period],” Fowler said. “I liked that we continued to fight and push forward, but there’s definitely a lot that we left out there that we can clean up.”

Michael Amadio scored what proved to be the game-winner in the second period, his goal gave the Knights a 5-2 lead.

“This is a three-goal league, if you score three, you’ve got a chance to win,” DeBoer said. “It took us five tonight, but we’ll take it. Two desperate teams going at it out there, a hard-fought game.”

Ben Hutton t also scored for Vegas.

John Gibson made 30 saves in the Ducks loss.