In what's become a familiar story, it's too little too late for the Golden Knights in a close loss to the Ducks

Stop me if you've heard this one before: the Golden Knights fall into an early hole, that they start to claw their way out of in the second period, before making it close late in the third, but falling just short by the end. Isn't that familiar?

Unfortunately, Sunday saw a failed comeback attempt for the second consecutive day, with Vegas falling 4-3 to Anaheim on the second half of a back-to-back. For those keeping track, that's now five straight losses, and seven of eight. On a night where it felt like Anaheim dominated in most facets, let's track what happened.

Mitch Marner the sniper?

It's no secret that Vegas' newest premier addition has historically been more of a pass-happy forward. Despite seven point-per-game or better seasons, Marner's usually done so by racking up the assists, feeding guys like Auston Matthews or Pavel Dorofeyev. In fact, he's only reached the 30-goal mark twice in his career. However, there's some signs of that changing, as, believe it or not, he's now scored in three consecutive games:

To add to the habit-breaking, they've all been clutch ones as well. Two games ago, he tied things up in the waning seconds against Dallas, while yesterday, he came through with the equalizer in the second period against Seattle.

While he didn't tie things up tonight, his goal gave Vegas new life at the halfway point of the game, ultimately energizing the near-comeback attempt into the third. Now, if the rest of the team could take some inspiration, that'd be quite nice. Ivan Barbashev might've, as he also scored in his third consecutive game after a long dry spell.

Self-inflicted wounds drag Vegas down repeatedly

Besides Marner and Barbashev's hot streaks, the rest of Vegas' night was not particularly great. While not as awful as his other recent outings, Adin Hill still had a poor night, allowing three goals on his first 16 shots faced before settling down in the third period.

Adding to the pain were several mistakes that stunted momentum, namely the only two penalties of the night. Both came virtually back-to-back early in the second period, when Anaheim had already been rolling for much of the game. On the first one, a wonky deflection extended their lead to 2-0:

While Vegas was able to kill off the second penalty, it still came less than a minute after that goal, resulting in the Golden Knights being hemmed into their own zone for much of the first half of the period. That's not exactly an ideal way to generate momentum.

Otherwise, going by the eye test, it just felt like a rough one. Turnovers abounded, there was a lack of sustained offensive zone time, and Vegas just couldn't get anything going for most of the game.

Tomas Hertl scoring with about five seconds left to make it a one-goal loss just felt like adding insult to injury, more than anything else. Lukas Dostal was an absolute wall, too. Finally, best wishes to Jonas Rondbjerg, who left the game after a nasty hit from Radko Gudas. Really hoping he's still good to go for Team Denmark at the Olympics.

Anyways, two more to go before a much-needed break. The first of those will be against the lowly Canucks; while I want to believe it can be a get-right game, I know better than to be confident in this team right now.