ANAHEIM, Calif. — It’s nights like this that the Vegas Golden Knights dreamed of when they made the sign-and-trade for Mitch Marner last summer.
Coming from the Toronto Maple Leafs, Marner received the brunt of the frustration from the Toronto market for the Maple Leafs’ shortcomings in the playoffs. Some justified, many weren’t. With a new slate in Las Vegas, Marner is looking to put his past demons to bed, and he’s off to a solid start on that journey.
Marner netted a hat trick in the Knights’ dominating 6-2 win over the Anaheim Ducks in Game 3 of the second round on Friday night at Honda Center to take a 2-1 series lead.
“People give him shit all the time about playoffs and this and that, I don’t think it bothers him a lick,” Golden Knights head coach John Tortorella said. “He just plays. He’s a hockey player.”
His first of the night came on the power play with 4.6 seconds left in the first period by cleaning up a loose rebound.
Marner’s second goal came on an odd-man rush, when Alex Killorn jumped up to challenge Shea Theodore, leaving Marner all alone as the trailer. He outwaited Ville Husso’s stretched-out pad and had an easy backhander into an open net.
The final goal to complete the hat trick followed a puck battle won by the Knights in the corner, when William Karlsson left a drop pass for Marner behind the net, and Marner took to the left faceoff circle and squeaked a wrist shot past Husso.
Marner scored the last three goals for the Knights and completed his hat trick before the second period ended.
“Obviously, I like it,” Marner said of where his game is at right now. “But I like our line’s game a lot, too. I like the five guys on the ice game. I think we’ve been playing very responsibly with the puck in our hands. We’ve been making plays when they’re there. I think we’re doing a good job of getting pucks in deep and winning battles and getting pucks back.”
It was a complete effort from the Knights on Friday. And it started early.
Only 1:06 into the game, Cutter Gauthier didn’t pick up Theodore as the trailer on the zone entry, so Jack Eichel fed Theodore a cross-ice pass to Theodore, who beat a partially screened Lukáš Dostál to quickly quiet down the Honda Center crowd.
The shots may have been 33-28 in favor of the Ducks, but a lot of the Ducks’ chances weren’t as good as the Knights’. Vegas had double the amount of high-danger scoring chances as Anaheim, 14-7, according to Natural Stat Trick.
“We played better as a team tonight,” Tortorella said. “Shot blocking. I thought we had good sticks. I thought we were better with time and space.
“There’s still some things we need to clean up. We’ll look at the tape and we’ll go from there. Not all problems are solved because you win a game. You’ve got to keep on trying to get better.
The Knights converted on the power play once in three chances, and also kept their penalty kill streak alive with two more successful kills. In the playoffs, Vegas has killed off 26 of 27 penalties, including a current streak of 21 kills in a row. This postseason, the Knights have outscored their opponents 3-1 on the penalty kill.
One of those shorthanded goals came in this one, when Brayden McNabb’s wrist shot from the right faceoff dot beat Dostál cleanly for the second goal for the Knights.
Offensively, the Ducks were only able to break through in the third period.
Beckett Sennecke got the Ducks on the board with a diving play to poke a puck sitting on the goal line into the back of the net early in the third, and then Chris Kreider one-timed a puck from the hashmarks from a pass from behind the net from Troy Terry with five minutes left.
Other than that, Vegas shut down Anaheim completely. The Knights blocked 20 shots compared to the Ducks’ six, and had eight takeaways to neutralize any threat.
“We want to get in front of them,” McNabb said. “You want to be physical when you can. They’re a team that’s really good in the neutral zone and can make a lot of plays. If you have good sticks and eliminate plays, it goes a long way.”
On top of playing a more competitive brand of hockey, another storyline for the Ducks heading into Game 4 on Sunday is who will start in net.
Dostál was pulled from the game after the first period after surrendering three goals, and was replaced by Ville Husso.
“Getting that third one at the end of the period certainly was a killer,” Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville said. “That was basically the game.”
Dostál stopped five of the eight shots he faced, while Husso stopped 17 of 19.
Dostál wasn’t great in this one by any means, but realistically, the only goal he looked bad on was the shorthanded goal by McNabb.
When asked after the game if Dostál will start in Game 4, Quenneville said, “We’ll see.”
The Ducks look to even the series while the Knights look to take a stranglehold on this series in Game 4 on Sunday night.
“We’ve had games like this this year, and we just got to make sure that we respond the right way, which is unacceptable,” Quenneville said.
