Journal Pioneer

Karlsson’s hat trick helps Vegas beat Flames 4-0

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William Karlsson scored a natural hat trick to lead the Vegas Golden Knights to a 4-0 victory over the Calgary Flames on Sunday.

Colin Miller also scored as Vegas snapped a four-game home losing streak and improved to 25-9-2 at T Mobile Arena.

Marc-Andre Fleury, who made his 20th start in 21 games, made 42 saves. In getting his 48th career shutout and fourth of the season, Fleury moved into a tie with Chris Osgood for 12th alltime amongst goaltender­s at 401. Vegas improved to 3-0-0 against Calgary while outscoring the Flames 15-5. The teams meet once more, in the regular-season finale at Calgary on April 7. Mike Smith stopped 27 shots as the Flames, one of the league’s better road teams this season, dropped to 20-11-6 away from home.

The Golden Knights opened the scoring by taking advantage of their first power-play opportunit­y, when Miller found the back of the net with a vicious slap shot from the point 5 1/2 minutes into the second period.

Less than one minute later, James Neal made a steal at the blue line, created space in Calgary’s zone and fed a streaking Karlsson, who one-timed the first of his three goals to give Vegas a 2-0 lead. Karlsson second goal came after he set up near the left circle, took Jonathan Marchessau­lt’s pass from behind the net, and fired a shot that deflected off Smith’s glove with just under seven minutes left in the middle period.

The Swedish-born centre completed his natural hat trick when he took a pass from defenceman Nate Schmidt in Vegas’ zone, skated the length of the ice and lifted a wrist shot over Smith’s blocker to make it 4-0 with 5:11 remaining in the second.

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