93.7 The Fan (PITTSBURGH) - The Las Vegas Golden Knights dominate the Pens 6-2 Thursday night at T-Mobile Arena.
After a 2-0 deficit, Rickard Rakell opened the scoring for the Pens in the second period to cut the Golden Knights lead to 2-1.
Less than a minute later, the Pens turned the puck over and Mitch Marner made them pay, as he stole the puck and passed it to Noah Hanifin. Marner cut to the net and scored while falling down from being tripped by Penguins goalie Arturs Silovs.
With the Pens entering the Golden Knights zone, Anthony Mantha made a perfect pass to a cutting Ben Kindel for a back door goal with 3:38 in the second period, to make it a one goal game again. It's Kindel's 16th goal of the season. It's Mantha's 49th point of the season, a career high for him.
In the third period, the Pens were bit by another turnover. Pavel Dorofeyev stole the puck from Ville Koivunen and Vegas took advantage of a 2 on 1 rush. Marner came away with the puck and fed a pass to Dorofeyev for a one-timer goal to make it a two goal lead again. It was Dorofeyev's second of the night.
"You know they're going to pressure. It's a fine line, you want to possess the puck you want to make plays, you don't want to get into a game where you're throwing it away or just scooping it and so that's a team that pressures really well. We work and I do believe when we're on we are a team that pressures very well and so with that it's also just the recovering off of them, it's making sure that your working to support, it's taking what's given," said head coach Dan Muse. "So obviously some of those tonight came back the other way. We'll look at it and find ways to continue to clean that up."
The Pens blew a 2 on 1 opportunitiy as Bryan Rust fed a pass to Egor Chinakov but it got past him. Vegas came back down the ice and scored again. Jack Eichel snapped a wrister past Silovs to make it 5-2 with under 14 minutes in the game. Brayden McNabb added an empty netter in the final minute.
Pittsburgh is back in action Saturday night against the Utah Mammoth.