- Mitch Marner went off for two goals and an assist in a 5-1 Game 6 win
- Brett Howden scored in his third straight game and Carter Hart stopped 22 of 23
- Read below for full details on Vegas advancing to face Anaheim in Round 2
Mitch Marner picked the perfect moment to bury his first goal of the playoffs.
The Vegas winger went off for two goals and an assist in a 5-1 win over the Utah Mammoth on Friday night at Delta Center, closing out the Western Conference First Round in six games. The Golden Knights now move on to face the Anaheim Ducks in Round 2.
Brett Howden opened the scoring at 15:02 of the first period. Marner’s shot from the high slot went wide of the net, the puck caromed off the end boards, and Howden was waiting at the back post to bury the rebound. That was his fourth goal in the past three games, including the 2OT short-handed winner that flipped the series in Game 5.
Marner ripped the door off in the second. With 45 seconds left in the period and Vegas pinning the Mammoth in their zone for more than two minutes, he blasted a slap shot from the top of the right circle past Karel Vejmelka to make it 2-0.
“I think this is what I hoped for sure, an opportunity to do something special,” Marner said, per NHL.com. “Like I said when I first got here, I knew it was a special group. All four lines contributed throughout the series.”
Kailer Yamamoto cut it to 2-1 at 7:41 of the third on a wrist shot that snuck under Carter Hart’s blocker. The Delta Center got loud.
Two minutes later, Colton Sissons quieted them down. Sissons crashed the low slot and stuffed home a rebound off Brayden McNabb’s point shot to make it 3-1.
Marner added a power-play tally at 12:09 to push the lead to 4-1 and his first three-point night of the postseason was complete. Hart stopped 22 of 23 to slam the door.
“We simplified things. We just tried to go north, tried to play behind the net,” Vegas coach John Tortorella said. “The second goal was a really important part of the game for us, just to shift itself, and then we scored the second one before they got one. I thought that was a really big part of the game.”
The top-seeded Knights now meet an Anaheim team that knocked off the Edmonton Oilers in six on Thursday. Two Pacific Division clubs in the second round, neither one circled by anybody back in October.
