GOLDEN RULE
Knights take 1-0 Cup lead
LAS VEGAS — In a single nine-minute stretch of the third period, the Capitals dramatically took the lead before the Vegas Golden Knights replied with two goals of their own. Washington’s Tom Wilson also flattened Vegas forward Jonathan Marchessault with a blindside hit that could reverberate through the Stanley Cup final.
After 10 goals and a finalrecord four lead changes overall in a fantastically entertaining opener, it’s tough to imagine what these unlikely opponents will do for an encore.
Tomas Nosek scored the tiebreaking goal midway through the third period, and the expansion Golden Knights surged past the Capitals for a 6-4 victory on Monday night.
“We put fun ahead of everything, and you can tell,” said Ryan Reaves, who scored the Knights’ tying goal in the third period. “Guys have are having fun and they’re smiling.”
The Eastern Conference champion Capitals hadn’t given up this many goals in 29 games since March 18, but they hadn’t seen anything like this charmed run by the upstart Knights. With its sellout crowd of hometown fans at deafening volume all night, Vegas put its usual speed and relentlessness on full display while overcoming that third-period deficit to win the opener of a matchup between two franchises seeking their first Stanley Cup titles.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 24 saves in an occasionally shaky performance, but the three-time Stanley Cup winner’s new teammates carried the goalie who has so often carried them with a relentless outburst of offense.
“We’re a good defensive group, but we weren’t tonight,” Marchessault said. “They’re a team that’s very fast in the neutral zone, and we gave them too much respect with the puck. We need to be faster in the defensive zone. We’re going to fix that in our game.”
The Game 1 winner has won the last six Cups and 61-of-78 overall.
Braden Holtby stopped 28 shots for the Capitals, whose first Stanley Cup final game in 20 years was a defensive nightmare. Washington still played a strong offensive game and had chances to win, but never slowed the Knights.
“I think next game is going to be different, and all the nervousness, all the bad thing goes away in this game,” said captain Alex Ovechkin, who had an assist. “We just have to forget about it and bounce back [in the] next one.”
Wilson got credit for the goal that put the Caps up 4-3 early in the third period when Fleury back-heeled a loose puck into his own net, but Reaves evened it 91 seconds later for Vegas.
Nosek then put the Knights ahead after Shea Theodore kept the puck in Washington’s zone, sidestepped a defender and fired a beautiful cross-ice pass to the Czech forward, who buried a one-timer for his second goal of the playoffs.