Golden Knights edge Kings on late Stone goal

In Los Angeles, the visiting Vegas Golden Knights’ Mark Stone scored with 26 left in the third period to edge the Kings, 4-3, on Tuesday in the season opener for both clubs.

The win put an exclamation mark on the debut of Bruce Cassidy as the Knights’ new head coach.

“I think, for a coach, you’re always worried that when you don’t know your team that well — it’s our first [regular-season] game — what will happen when things don’t go well? It’s always to me a sign of good character in the room when a team’s resilient, so that’s a big plus for me no matter how the score turned out,” Cassidy said.

Logan Thompson made 27 saves in the Golden Knights win.

“A lot of ups and downs but, overall, I thought we played a pretty good 60 minutes,” Stone said. “And we had our breakdowns, but that’s just learning curves. If we can kind of cut those in half, we’ll get it done.”

The two traded goals all night with the Kings taking an early 1-0 lead off a strike from Gabriel Vilardi midway through the opening period.

Jonathan Marchessault got the Knights even in the middle frame, and Jack Eichel put Vegas ahead, 2-1, in the second. Eichel’s goal came as a Vegas power play expired.

“The way I look at it, power play, sometimes it’s how timely is it, and I think it was very timely in that circumstance,” Cassidy said, “So even though a couple of them in the middle of the game didn’t look pretty, and we’ll continue to work on it, timely goals are what matters.”

Arthur Kaliyev and Adrian Kempe added goals for the Kings. Kempe tied the game, 2-2.

“At times when we were connected, we were fast. Other times disconnected, the passing was off, timing was off,” Kings coach Todd McLellan said. “Forwards wanted the puck, [defensemen] held on. Forwards needed to get the puck, or [the defensemen] needed to get the puck up, forwards weren’t available. So, work to do.”

William Karlsson also scored for the Knights; his goal came off the power play.

Vegas was 1-for-5 on the power play, the Kings were scoreless in three chances.

“We were still in it at the end of the night,” McLellan said. “But obviously the focus is going to be on the play at the end, which makes no sense. It’s hard to defend it. But our team gave up 51 shots on goal tonight.”