.png)
The Vegas Golden Knights continued their winning ways Sunday, March 12 as they defeated the St. Louis Blues, 5-3, inside the Enterprise Center in St. Louis, MO.
“For playing four [games] in six days, with the mental fatigue you go through and the travel, we did a good job,” head coach Bruce Cassidy said.
The Golden Knights will wrap up their five-game road trip Tuesday, March 14 inside the confines of the Wells Fargo Center as they get set for a matchup with the Philadelphia Flyers. Puck drop is set for 4 p.m. and can be seen on AT&T Sportsnet in Las Vegas or ESPN+ nationwide.
Going into Tuesday’s game, Vegas is now 3-1-0 on this road trip and a win on Tuesday would give Vegas eight of the possible ten points to grab.
Speaking of those points in the standings, Sunday’s win now runs the Vegas record to 41-20-6 on the season with 88 points in the Pacific Division. Vegas now owns a three-point division lead over the Kings and a seven-point lead over Seattle who sits in third place.
Goaltender Jiri Patera made his first career NHL start in net Sunday night as he became the first goalie drafted by Vegas to appear in a game.
Patera finished his night saving 30 of the 33 shots he faced for a final save percentage of .909 and his first win as an NHL goalie.
“I’m glad we got the win,” Patera said, “Towards the end, I was a little bit scared but we got the job done.”
Center Ivan Barbashev made his return to St. Louis since being traded to the Golden Knights and finished the game with an assist on defenseman Alex Pietrangelo’s empty-net goal.
“It was fun seeing some old friends especially just being traded a couple weeks ago so it was kind of nice to see them,” Barbashev said. “I was here for seven years, I really tried to play my best.”
Center William Karlsson got the scoring going for the Golden Knights in the first period when he scored on a back-hander in the slot to put the visitors up 1-0. Left-winger Jakub Vrana answered the Karlsson goal about five and a half minutes later when received a pass in the slot to tie the game at one heading into the middle frame.
Vegas regained the lead in the early stages of the second period when right-winger Jonathan Marchessault scored just 28 seconds into the period to put Vegas up 2-1. Marchessault’s fellow right-winger teammate Michael Amadio added to the Vegas lead 1:42 later to put the Knights up 3-1 less than three minutes into the middle frame.
St. Louis did narrow the gap later in the period when center Jordan Kyrou scored his 30th goal of the season to make it a 3-2 game with less than five minutes to play in the second.
Another St. Louis center Tyler Pitlick tied the game up at three less than four minutes into the third period.
It took the Knights 1:42 of game time to answer the Pitlick with one of their own as left-winger Pavel Dorofeyev scored the go-ahead goal with 14:37 to play in regulation. This was Dorofeyev’s first NHL goal in only his sixth career NHL game. Dorofeyev also had an assist in this one as he assisted on Karlsson’s goal in the first.
As mentioned before, Pietrangelo netted an empty-net goal for the second time in as many games to seal the win for Vegas. The goal came with seven seconds to play in regulation and was Pietrangelo’s ninth goal of the year.
Four different Golden Knight players had a multi-point game with three of those four having one goal and one assist.
Right-winger Keegan Kolesar missed Sunday’s game with an upper-body injury. The team has him listed as day-to-day.