Chandler Stephenson and Mark Stone each had a goal and an assist and Robin Lehner made 26 saves to lead the visiting Vegas Golden Knights to a 5-2 victory over the Nashville Predators on Wednesday night.
Alex Pietrangelo, Jonas Rondbjerg and Adam Brooks also scored for Vegas, which earned a split of a two-game road trip that began with a 5-2 loss at St. Louis on Monday.
Filip Forsberg, playing for the first time after missing nine games with an upper-body injury, scored twice and Juuse Saros finished with 30 saves for Nashville, which had a four-game home winning streak snapped.
Vegas took a 1-0 lead with 47.4 seconds remaining in the first period on Stephenson’s seventh goal of the season. Stone set up the score, stripping the puck from Alexandre Carrier and then feeding Stephenson breaking in alone down the slot where he fired a wrist shot past Saros’ blocker side.
Nashville nearly tied it early in the second period when Forsberg fired a shot that clanged off the post and also bounced off Lehner’s back. Twenty-four seconds later, Rondbjerg made it 2-0 when he stole the puck from Roman Josi and broke down the right wing where he fired a wrist shot off the far post and into the net for his second goal of the season.
Brooks, claimed off waivers from Montreal last Thursday, increased the Golden Knights’ lead to 3-0 later in the period when he tapped in a cross-crease pass by Keegan Kolesar for his first goal of the season.
Nashville appeared to cut the lead to 3-1 with a Forsberg goal at the 16:03 mark, but the score was later waved off after Vegas successfully challenged that Thomas Novak had interfered with Lehner’s stick just before the puck trickled across the goal line.
Forsberg broke the shutout at the 5:20 mark of the third period when he took a stretch pass from Matt Duchene and beat Lehner with a backhand at the end of a clean breakaway.
But Pietrangelo extended the Vegas lead back to three goals with a short-handed goal, ripping a wrist shot from the slot past Saros’ blocker side at the end of a two-on-one break with Stephenson.
Forsberg made it 4-2 with a power play goal, one-timing a Josi pass from the left circle over Lehner’s left shoulder for his sixth goal of the season.
Stone then sealed it with an empty net goal with 1:52 left, his first goal of the season.
–Field Level Media