Vegas’ Noah Hanifin scored twice in the third period, including the game winner in the final minute, as the Golden Knights got their first road win of the season, 4-2 over the host Edmonton Oilers and Connor McDavid.
Hanifin, who had a three-point showing in Saturday’s 4-3 win over the Utah Hockey Club, knotted it 2-all in the third with a long shot that found its way through a screen at 10:05.
Then the defenseman buried the winning goal from the left circle off a feed from Ivan Barbashev with 49 seconds that made it 3-2.
Mark Stone scored his sixth goal into an empty net with four seconds left for Vegas’ sixth win in its past seven matches (6-1-0), improving the club to 8-1-0 against the Western Conference.
Jack Eichel had a goal and two assists, while Barbashev dished out three helpers. Goaltender Adin Hill stopped 27 shots.
Absent three matches after suffering an ankle injury in the first 37 seconds at the Columbus Blue Jackets on Oct. 28, McDavid was originally expected to miss two to three weeks.
But the three-time Hart Trophy winner as league MVP took an optional skate Monday with his teammates and entered the lineup Wednesday. He had two shots on goal in 21:02 of ice time.
Brett Kulak and Zach Hyman scored Edmonton’s goals. Stuart Skinner made 31 saves as the club fell to 2-5-1 on home ice.
While all eyes in the home crowd were on No. 97 in his return to the ice as the contest opened, Eichel struck the match’s first blow after a nifty pass from Shea Theodore through the neutral zone.
One-on-one with Skinner, Eichel, the next pick in the 2015 draft after McDavid went No. 1 overall, deked the netminder one way and easily slipped in his fourth goal on the goalie’s glove side at 16:05 for a 1-0 lead.
In a much more productive next period offensively, the Oilers gained zone possession and fired eight of the first 10 shots of the second on Hill in the first four minutes yet could not beat him.
However, the pressure finally paid off at 12:18 when Kulak, in the high slot, redirected Darnell Nurse’s long one-timer for his third goal.
Hyman gave Edmonton its first lead with his third goal in four games (after scoring none in the Oilers’ first 10 games), taking an odd bounce off the stanchion and making it 2-1 with 4:04 remaining in the second.
–Field Level Media