a 5-4 Game 5 win over the Utah Mammoth exactly two weeks ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cThe puck seems to follow him,\u201d Vegas coach John Tortorella said of Dorofeyev. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t say much. He just goes and plays. He makes a big play the other night…He\u2019s a good two-way player.\u201d<\/p>\n
That praise is a testament to Dorofeyev\u2019s growth, and a phrase few would have said a year or two ago \u2013 especially in the playoffs. Former coach Bruce Cassidy even benched Dorofeyev two years ago aside from seven minutes of ice time in a first-round playoff loss to the Dallas Stars.<\/p>\n
Dorofeyev played more frequently in last year\u2019s playoff run but managed only one goal and one assist in 70 minutes of ice time. He\u2019s now tied with Brett Howden for a team-high seven goals this postseason. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Howden finished the Golden Knights\u2019 last overtime game, capping Dorofeyev\u2019s hat trick against Utah, as the team is now 3-0 in the extra period in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re a pretty comfortable group in there,\u201d Andersson said. \u201cThere are a lot of players in there who have been through it and have won. They usually lead the charge. We\u2019re an older team and it\u2019s that feeling that no moment is too big. We\u2019re very confident when we go to overtime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vegas nearly avoided that fate Tuesday as it was in control with a 2-1 lead for most of the third period.<\/p>\n
After 29 straight games encompassing 67 days, third-line center Tomas Hertl scored for the second straight contest to start the frame.<\/p>\n
Defensive sniper Rasmus Andersson started the sequence by lacing a shot from near the glass beyond the faceoff circle. Winger Brandon Saad redirected the puck before Anaheim goalie Lukas Dostal knocked it away, but Hertl slid in for a second-chance score.<\/p>\n
Some had called for Hertl\u2019s benching \u2014 especially since William Karlsson returned to the lineup \u2014 but Tortorella stuck with him and kept saying he only needed to find the net once to regain his confidence and get back on form.<\/p>\n
That message now feels prophetic.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery game I was going through (the goal-scoring drought), I tried to refresh and not think about it,\u201d Hertl said. \u201cI tried so many things over the last two months. It was amost impossible not to think about it. Hopefully this is behind me and this never happens again because it was way too long.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hertl might have done some manifestation of his own in Game 5, as he vowed in an intermission radio-broadcast interview that the Golden Knights, \u201cwill get this win for (Brayden McNabb).\u201d<\/p>\n
The defensive captain McNabb played only 3:17 on Tuesday before getting a major game-misconduct penalty for a massive hit on Ducks center Ryan Poehling when he didn\u2019t have the puck.<\/p>\n
Poehling\u2019s head hit the glass and he had to be helped off the ice. He didn\u2019t return to the game.<\/p>\n
Anaheim scored on the ensuing five-minute power play when rookie phenom Bennett Senecke tapped in a rebound off a shot from Cutter Gauthier to go up 1-0.<\/p>\n
Tortorella refused to comment on McNabb\u2019s controversial ejection, though mentioned frustration that Anaheim didn’t receive as much of a penalty for a pair of hits taken by defenseman Dylan Coghlan.<\/p>\n
Playing in his third playoff game this season after replacing Kaeden Korczak in the lineup, Coghlan took a high stick from winger Troy Terry in the first period and a late hit from Sennecke at the end of regulation.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
Tortorella said he was proud of how the Golden Knights maintained their composure on a night where the officiating breaks went against them.<\/p>\n
Anaheim outpaced Vegas by four shots on net, but goaltender Carter Hart bounced back from a mediocre Game 4 outing with five more saves than Dostal. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have all the faith in the world in Carter,\u201d Andersson said. \u201cIf you look back at the Utah series, I think he was very solid and stole a couple games for us when we were not our best.\u201d<\/p>\n
But perhaps no one on the team has saved Vegas as much this year as Dorofeyev. It became a common occurrence during the regular season, but questions lingered on if he could translate the success to the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Dorofeyev has since answered those concerns emphatically.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published Tuesday, May 12, 2026 | 11:01 p.m. The biggest criticism of Pavel Dorofeyev coming into this season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-313230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}