Golden Knights hit jackpot, sweep Kings in first playoff
Brayden McNabb scored against his former team in the second period, lifting Vegas to a 1-0 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday night that made the Golden Knights the first expansion team in NHL history to sweep its first playoff series.
Marc-Andre Fleury turned in another stellar performance, stopping 31 shots as the Knights finished off their fourth onegoal victory of the series. It was his second shutout of the series. Vegas awaits the winner of the series between Anaheim and San Jose, which the Sharks lead 3-0.
The Knights became the second team to win their first four playoff games, joining the 1970 Pittsburgh Penguins.
McNabb scored from the right circle, beating Jonathan Quick’s glove, at 4:04 of the second for his first career playoff goal. The Kings left the defenseman exposed in last year’s expansion draft, and the Knights snapped him up.
The Kings pulled Quick in the closing seconds, when Dustin Brown skated straight toward the net and just missed. Brown also hit the left post with 10 minutes to go in the third. CAPITALS 3, BLUE JACKETS
2>> Lars Eller scored in the second overtime period, and Washington took Game 3 to tighten up the the firstround playoff series. Columbus won the first two games — both in overtime — in Washington. It was the Capitals’ turn to prevail in OT, this time on the Blue Jackets’ home ice, to pull to 2-1 in the best-of-seven series.
Eller tapped a rebound past Sergei Bobrovsky 9 minutes into the second extra period for his first goal in the playoff series.
JETS 2, WILD 0 >> Mark Scheifele scored both goals for Winnipeg, and Connor Hellebuyck made 30 saves for his seventh shutout this season, as the Jets took a 3-1 lead in the first-round playoff series. Scheifele scored
with 28 seconds left in the first period and tacked on an empty-netter with 11 seconds remaining.
Devan Dubnyk stopped 26 shots for the Wild, who played without star left wing Zach Parise because of a broken sternum suffered in Game 3.
• Parise will be out for at least the remainder of the series and likely longer if the Wild advances. The Wild revealed the injury about three hours before Game 4 against the Jets.
Parise took a hard hit to the chest area with about four minutes remaining in Game 3 and the Wild leading 6-2, when he was sandwiched by the Jets’ Scheifele and defenseman Ben Chiarot.