Vegas Golden Knights Fail to Close Out Wild in 4-2 Loss

Needing a victory to advance in the NHL playoffs, the Vegas Golden Knights instead dropped a difficult 4-2 decision to the Minnesota Wild on Monday night.

Vegas now leads the series 3-2.

Things looked good for the Golden Knights as Mark Stone scored to get the VGK on the board first at 8:14. But less than a minute later the Wild struck back on a Kirill Kaprizov goal at 9:06, his first of the playoffs.

After that, the Wild scored twice more to take a 3-1 lead into the first intermission.

Vegas would get a little closer with Alec Martinez’s power-play goal, his first of the playoffs. But despite putting on the pressure late, the Golden Knights were unable to score and an empty-net goal from Nico Sturm sealed the win for Minnesota.

The Takeaways

• Marc-Andre Fleury faced only 13 shots on the night, stopping 10 of them. While not his best outing, Fleury still played a good game in taking the loss.
• Minnesota only registered one shot on goal in the second period.
• Vegas had 22 shots in the second period and 11 more in the third, but Cam Talbot stood tall and held it together for the Wild.
• Even with tonight’s result, the Vegas Golden Knights still look to clearly be the better team in the series. But as we’ve seen, this team struggles to finish sometimes and tonight was another one of those nights.