In St Paul, it was the Vegas Golden Knights’ turn to rally against the Minnesota Wild on Wednesday night.
Reilly Smith scored in the third for Vegas to force extra time in the match.
Alex Pietrangelo scored at 1:53 of the extra session for a 3-2 win for Vegas.
“This time of the year, it’s probably my favorite time of the year,” Pietrangelo said. “As you get up to the playoffs, everything becomes obviously more competitive.”
Marc-Andre Fleury made 26 saves in the win.
“I knew this season was a short season, and both me and (Vegas goalie) Robin [Lehner] get to play, right?” Fleury said. “I didn’t think I was going to reach Roberto, and I’m pretty honored to have a chance to play enough and play on such a great team that allowed me to catch him. … Every night, I just try to do our best and keep the game close and keep our team into it, and the team has been playing very well and scoring some goals, so obviously that has been helping me out there.”
Kirill Kaprizov struck for two goals in the third period to give the Wild a 2-1 lead.
“I think certainly that’s why [players like Kaprizov are] going to get more money than some other guys, right?” Wild head coach Dean Evason said. “They score more goals in those situations, and they’ve got a knack for doing that and are obviously gifted at doing that. [But] we’ve had people step up all over the place. Kirill’s had a [heck] of a year, no question, but there’s so many other things that everybody does on our hockey club that allows us to have success.”
Chandler Stephenson opened the scoring in the game to give the Knights a 1-0 lead in the middle frame..
“It was a hard-fought game, and a real gutsy effort by our guys,” Golden Knights head coach Peter DeBoer said. “Coming back the way they did in the third again, it looked like the same story as the other night, but I loved our response. We were better tonight, we deserved it. We put a lot of good work in. I’m glad we ended the curse [against the Wild], at least for tonight.”
Cam Talbot made 31 saves in the loss.
“We like to think we can get better as the game goes on, and that’s what we want,” Minnesota’s Marcus Foligno said. “We want to be able to finish teams and to come back, and that’s not going to be an easy road, we know that. If we have that resiliency and that mentality going into third periods that we can catch teams if we’re down a goal or two, that’s just going to help us.”
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