{"id":689223,"date":"2026-05-23T09:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T09:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/689223\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T09:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T09:44:08","slug":"golden-knights-rally-past-avalanche-to-win-game-2-extend-west-final-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/689223\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Knights rally past Avalanche to win Game 2, extend West Final lead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ross Colton<\/a> scored for the Avalanche, the No. 1 seed from the Central Division and the Western Conference.\u00a0Wedgewood made 22 saves.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know you\u2019re running into some adversity and you\u2019re going to lose some games in the playoffs. That\u2019s just facts,\u201d Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. \u201cWe can\u2019t ride the emotional roller coaster like fans, right? You lose Game 1, you\u2019re getting swept. If we win Game 1, we\u2019re sweeping them. Like, that\u2019s not reality. You have to deal with the task at hand and what\u2019s to come. We\u2019re not going to try and win four games the next night in Vegas. We\u2019re trying to win one. It can sound cliche, but that\u2019s how we approach it. Focus on our process, what we need to do. We played a great hockey game tonight. So did they. It could go either way.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not giving up on your season because all of a sudden you lost two games in the playoffs. There\u2019s still lots of hockey to be played.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Avalanche were without defenseman Cale Makar<\/a>, who missed his second straight game with an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n

Colton gave Colorado a 1-0 lead at 16:59 of the first period. After Vegas defenseman Kaedan Korczak<\/a> blocked Brent Burns<\/a>\u2019 point shot, Colton skated around from behind the net, settled a bouncing puck and scored with a wrist shot from the slot that went short side over Hart\u2019s left arm.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe dug a hole. It\u2019s on us,\u201d Avalanche forward Logan O’Connor<\/a> said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to reset, go into Vegas and do the same thing they did to us. It starts with one game and just chip away at this thing. There are things we can learn from that game. I think we got away from our game plan in the third period. We let them hang around throughout the game and they\u2019re going to capitalize on their opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado captain Gabriel Landeskog<\/a> said, “I liked our game a lot. There’s not a lot of comfort in saying that, I guess, after a loss. But at the end of the day we’ll regroup.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eichel tied it 1-1 at 9:15 of the third. Dorofeyev tipped Barbashev\u2019s crossing pass to Eichel in the neutral zone, and Eichel took the puck straight to the right face-off dot before scoring with a wrist shot that went over Wedgewood\u2019s right leg and in off the far post.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it just gave us some life,\u201d Vegas defenseman Noah Hanifin<\/a> said. “After that second period it was a little bit of a grind, and I think just when he scored that goal it just gave us some life. And from there we got rolling a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vegas defenseman Brayden McNabb<\/a> left the game at 13:40 of the first after a hit on Colorado defenseman Sam Malinski<\/a>. He missed the second period but returned for the third and finished out the game.<\/p>\n

The Golden Knights were without forward and captain Mark Stone<\/a> for a fifth straight game due to a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n

NOTES: Eichel\u2019s goal made him the third-fastest United States-born player in NHL history to reach 60 career Stanley Cup Playoff points (54 games), behind Kevin Stevens<\/a> (46 games) and Brian Leetch<\/a> (49 games). He has 61 playoff points (12 goals, 49 assists). \u2026 The Golden Knights earned their fourth third-period comeback win of the playoffs, their most in a postseason. \u2026 The Avalanche had been 45-0-0 when leading after two periods in the regular season and playoffs combined, which marked the most wins of any team, and were 5-0 in the playoffs when scoring first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ross Colton scored for the Avalanche, the No. 1 seed from the Central Division and the Western Conference.\u00a0Wedgewood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-689223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}