Mark Stone scores 100th goal as a Golden Knight in dominant 4-2 win over San Jose

Mark Stone had a goal and an assist, the former his 100th career goal as a Golden Knight in a 4-2 win over the San Jose Sharks. Zach Whitecloud, Victor Olofsson, and Tomas Hertl also scored for Vegas, who won their ninth out of the last 10 games. William Eklund and Timothy Liljegren scored, and Alexander Georgiev had 39 saves for the Sharks.

Both teams started off the period with matching quick tempos offensively. It took nearly eight minutes before the game had its first stoppage in play. It looked like it might be a repeat of their game in New Jersey Saturday night. Then, thanks to a great pass by Shea Theodore alongside a combo of good stick work and a spiffy wrister by Mark Stone…

…followed 1:29 later by an ugly defensive brain fart from the Sharks that turned into Zach Whitecloud’s third of the year. Suddenly, it’s 2-0 Golden Knights. Despite the Sharks hanging around the rest of the period like Buffalo on Saturday night, there was a sense this could end fairly quickly for them.

As the second got underway, that sense steadily grew; the ice tilting slowly but surely toward the Sharks' end. It didn’t result in many scoring chances in the first five minutes. Still, it did have the added benefit of draining a good chunk of San Jose’s offensive energy. Midway through the period, William Englund fired a wrister off the power play for a goal.

The San Jose Sharks never stood a chance against the Vegas Golden Knights

Even with the goal, things remained pretty one-sided in favor of Vegas. Ultimately, the 19 shots (including a nice wrister by Victor Olofsson at the horn) fired were all gobbled up by Georgiev, who grew calm and confident throughout that period. With a late-period power play, there was a sense a third Golden Knights goal would be close to arriving. 

The third period commenced and the power play, after some feeling around, finally struck gold. The culprit? The man who’s responsible for four of the last six Vegas goals on the man advantage: Victor Olofsson.

But as has become an impressive superpower for the Sharks this season, they came out and slowly but surely carved a way back into the game. This time it was from former Leaf Timothy Lijegren, beating Samsonov off a well-timed screen.

Ultimately, as has also been the case with San Jose, the effort came to naught. Tomas Hertl added an empty net goal with 1:20 left to put the game on ice to the happiest of vibes. It was also the luckiest since Stone probably should’ve gotten called for a slash on Macklin Celebrini a moment before the pass that set the goal up.

Next on the Marquee:

It’s the start of the third homestand in as many weeks, with the New York Islanders on Thursday night at 7 P.M. This season has been especially frustrating for the Islanders fans. They’ve had three losing streaks of more than two games this season, and zero winning streaks of more than two games. But they also have Ilya Sorokin, so it’s easily possible we end up with a game similar to the one tonight. Until then…