Jack Eichel had his first multi-goal game with Vegas, tallying twice, as the Golden Knights defeated the host Seattle Kraken 5-2 on Friday night.
Logan Thompson’s bid for a second straight shutout was thwarted at 10:44 of the third period as Seattle’s Alex Wennberg took a drop pass from Jared McCann and beat the screened goaltender from the slot. Thompson made 26 saves.
Shea Theodore also scored and Jonathan Marchessault and William Karlsson added empty-netters for Vegas, which swept the two-game series in Seattle and won its fourth in a row overall. The Golden Knights (38-28-4, 80 points) moved past the Dallas Stars and into the second and final wild-card position in the Western Conference.
Kole Lind scored his first NHL goal for the Kraken (21-41-6, 48 points), and Philipp Grubauer stopped 21 of the 24 shots he faced.
Eichel opened the scoring at 10:28 of the first period. Chandler Stephenson kept the puck in the offensive zone and fed defenseman Alec Martinez on the left side. Martinez drove to the bottom of the faceoff circle before centering the puck, and Eichel tipped it between Grubauer’s pads.
Eichel made it 2-0 at 1:26 of the second period after skating hard into the offensive zone to beat a defender to the faceoff circle and prevent an icing call. A Seattle defenseman lost his edge and control of the puck in the left wing corner and it bounced off the side of the net before Evgenii Dadonov picked up the loose puck and fed Eichel in front for a one-timer.
Theodore, a defenseman, joined the rush, skated down the middle of the ice and made it 3-0 at 7:20 of the second after taking a pass from Dadonov on the right wing. Theodore, who played his junior hockey in Seattle, also scored in Vegas’ 3-0 victory over the Kraken on Wednesday.
McCann, the Kraken’s leading goal-scorer, tried to spark his team midway through the second, dropping the gloves with Vegas’ Michael Amadio.
Seattle’s Yanni Gourde and Vegas’ Ben Hutton duked it out in the waning seconds of the middle period.
–Field Level Media