LAS VEGAS — Jonathan Marchessault scored three goals for his sixth career hat trick, Logan Thompson made 28 saves, and the Vegas Golden Knights beat the Winnipeg Jets 5-2 on Thursday night.
William Karlsson and Ivan Barbashev also scored as the Golden Knights improved to 10-0-1 in front of an announced crowd of 17,878 and became the 13th team in NHL history to record a season-opening point streak of at least 11 games.
After three consecutive overtime games, the last two going to a shootout, the Golden Knights registered their first mult-goal margin victory in five games.
“It was definitely a tough stretch the past few games, but I mean when you put in the work, sometimes you get rewarded and (it) just felt like that tonight,” Marchessault said. “Every night somebody else is stepping in, that’s the mentality we had last year and it was good to feel that I could help my teammates tonight.”
Kyle Connor and Alex Iafallo scored for the Jets while Connor Hellebuyck made 21 saves.
Karlsson put Vegas on the board first when he raced down the left side and one-timed a nifty backhand pass from Pavel Dorofeyev past Hellebuyck midway through the first. Karlsson extended his point streak to eight games with his fourth goal during the stretch giving him 10 points in that span.
PHOTOS: Marchessault's hat trick leads Golden Knights to 5-2 win over Jets to improve to 10-0-1
The teams exchanged goals in the second period, with Winnipeg tying the score when Connor skated from the blue line, through the left circle, across the slot and lasered a backhand into the net at 6:17.
It took less than a minute for Vegas to answer on a power play, as Thompson fired a stretch pass to Vegas’ blue line, where Mark Stone sent the puck ahead for Marchessault, who finished his breakaway at the 7-minute mark. It was Thompson’s first career assist.
“We’ve been working on that at practice just with the goalies making a quick up and it worked tonight,” Thompson said. ”I hit Stoney, and Stoney makes a beautiful pass to Marchy, and Marchy finishes it. So it was perfect tonight.”
Shortly thereafter, on another power play, Barbashev pushed Vegas’ lead to 3-1 at 8:38 when he needed little effort in sending the puck past an out-of-position Hellebuyck.
Iafallo closed the gap to one goal at 1:51 of the third period when he was in the right spot at the right time for a second deflection off Cole Perfetti’s initial redirect for a power-play goal.
Marchessault picked up his second goal of the night less than 4 minutes later to extend Vegas’ lead back to two goals.
Marchessault’s empty-net goal with 2:52 to go secured his fifth hat trick with Vegas - first since last May 14 that gave him two in the playoffs.
“We got real sloppy there for the last 10 minutes for that second period,” Winnipeg interim coach Scott Arniel said. “We got ourselves going again in the third, got some good shifts. We scored that power play goal, made it 3-2. We’re hoping to make it a little bit better. And then another tough one.”
The Jets, who lost their third straight, are 2-1-2 since Arniel stepped in for coach Rick Bowness, who is on a leave of absence.
UP NEXT
Jets: At Arizona on Saturday.
Golden Knights: Host Colorado on Saturday.
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