Reilly Smith’s second goal of the night was the overtime winner to give the visiting Vegas Golden Knights a 3-2 victory over the Calgary Flames on Saturday.
Pavel Dorofeyev also scored for the Golden Knights (46-22-8, 100 points), who snapped a two-game skid and have a three-point lead on the Los Angeles Kings for first place in the Pacific Division. Vegas also clinched a playoff spot.
Goaltender Akira Schmid made 21 saves in his first start of the season and Shea Theodore collected three assists.
Joel Hanley and Matt Coronato scored for the Flames (36-27-13, 85 points), who erased a two-goal deficit to gain a valuable point. Goalie Dustin Wolf stopped 31 shots in another strong performance, which included a penalty kill in the final two minutes of regulation time.
The Flames are four points back of the Minnesota Wild for the Western Conference’s second wild-card spot with six games remaining. Calgary has one game in hand on the Wild.
Smith became the hero with a fortuitous bounce. After going behind the net he simply put the puck toward the front of the cage and it bounced off the skate of a defender and into the net with 28.4 seconds remaining in overtime.
The Flames and Golden Knights meet once more this season.
Vegas had the vast majority of opportunities from the drop of the puck and finally opened the scoring with 81 seconds remaining in the first period when Dorofeyev lifted a nifty backhand shot during an odd-man rush for his team-leading 33rd goal of the season.
Smith doubled the lead at 9:57 of the second period when he gained position in front of the net and neatly deflected Theodore’s point shot.
Hanley put the Flames on the board with 7.7 seconds remaining in the second period by lifting a top-shelf wrist shot from the point for his second goal of the season. It also marks the first goal by the Flames this season against Vegas after they were blanked in the first two meetings.
Coronato evened the score 43 seconds into the third period, gaining the puck after an offensive-zone faceoff win by Mikael Backlund and finding the mark with a long short-side shot.
–Field Level Media
