Marchessault scores twice as Vegas wins
LAS VEGAS — Jonathan Marchessault vowed after the Golden Knights’ morning skate to come out swinging in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals, looking to avoid a backand-forth affair with the Winnipeg Jets.
He didn’t disappoint.
For the second straight game, Marchessault scored two goals — one just 35 seconds into the game — to lead Vegas to a 4-2 victory Wednesday night, helping the expansion Golden Knights to a 2-1 series lead.
Vegas, two wins from advancing to the Stanley Cup Finals, improved to 5-1 at home in the playoffs and hosts Game 4 on Friday night.
“We worked all year to get in a position like that,” Marchessault said. “We definitely can’t take it for granted. They got to come out like their season’s on the line, so we’ve got to be ready to push back and get some energy off the crowd.”
Marchessault added an empty-net goal with three seconds left, becoming the first player in league history to score in the first and last 60 seconds of the same Stanley Cup playoff game, according to the NHL. He leads Vegas with 17 points (eight goals, nine assists) in the postseason.
James Neal and Alex Tuch also scored for Vegas, and MarcAndre Fleury stopped 33 shots.
Mark Scheifele scored twice for Winnipeg and has a playoffleading 14 goals in 15 games. Connor Hellebuyck had 26 saves for the Jets, who arrived in Las Vegas having outscored their opposition 23-15 in road games during the playoffs.
“A few miscues and they made us pay for it; that can’t happen,” Scheifele said. “We can’t sulk on this too long. We’ve got to pick ourselves up tomorrow and be ready for a big game on Friday.”
The Jets are trailing in a series for the first time this postseason. Teams with a 2-1 lead in the conference finals (or NHL semifinals) have won the series 35 of 43 times (81.4 percent) since 1975.
“That’s an important challenge,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said. “We’re going to have to be
able to handle that. It would be rare that you lead the series straight through. We want to make sure we deal with our loss, don’t carry it too heavily and then come up with our finest game of the postseason.”
The problem for Winnipeg is stopping a Golden Knights team that is finally seeing production from its depth players. The second line of Neal, Tuch and Erik Haula continued to heat up.
After Scheifele tied the game in the second period, Neal answered 12 seconds later after Haula dished a perfect pass to give the Knights a 2-1 lead. Tuch notched his fifth goal of the playoffs after Neal fed him with a pass from behind the net to make it 3-1 in the second.
“They played on the road trip, they just didn’t have many chances to score, and I thought they were more involved in the offense and they were skating, and they played really well,” Vegas coach Gerard Gallant said about his second line.