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The Vegas Golden Knights kicked off February with a 5-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres Tuesday, Feb. 1 to improve their record to 27-16-3 on the year.
The win on Tuesday marked the 200th win in franchise history for Vegas and kept the team in first place in the Pacific division.
“We’ve gotten scoring from our third and fourth lines the whole first half,” head coach Pete DeBoer said. “Without it, we wouldn’t have the record that we have.”
The Knights’ offense was clicking on all cylinders against the Sabres as they went up 4-0 in a span of about 25 minutes of game time.
Former Golden Knight Alex Tuch broke the scoreless drought for Buffalo with four minutes to play in the second period to make it a 4-1 contest heading to the second intermission.
Vegas captain Mark Stone and Buffalo left-wing John Hayden traded goals in the third en route to a 5-2 final score in favor of the Golden Knights.
One of the goal scorers was Reilly Smith who scored his 12th goal of the season only 33 seconds into the game to put Vegas up 1-0.
“It was nice to help the team get an early lead,” Smith said postgame.
It was a solid night between the pipes for VGK goalie Robin Lehner who finished with 30 saves on 32 shot attempts for a final save percentage of .938.
“It was huge,” he said. “We talked about it before the game that it doesn’t matter who we play, two points is two points. We’ve been playing pretty good.”
The three stars of the game were Smith, Lehner and center Brett Howden.
The next game for Vegas will be next Tuesday, Feb. 8 as it hits the road to play the Edmonton Oilers.
Puck drop is set for 6 p.m. PST and can be seen on AT&T Sportnet in Vegas.