Marchessault delivers in clutch again as Golden Knights save season with Game 3 win

By Justin Emerson

Friday, June 4, 2021 | 11:50 p.m.

For the second time this postseason, Jonathan Marchessault scored a game-tying goal that turned a series on its head. His goal sparked the Golden Knights to three straight wins over the Minnesota Wild in the first round.

We’ll see if his goal in Game 3 has the same effect against the Colorado Avalanche.

Marchessault netted the equalizer with 5:18 to go in the third period Friday, setting up Max Pacioretty to tip in the winner 45 seconds later. The Golden Knights were just over five minutes from a potentially insurmountable 3-0 series deficit, but instead, as he often does, Marchessault sparked a rally and lifted the Golden Knights right back into the thick of it.

Vegas won 3-2 at T-Mobile Arena and trimmed Colorado’s series lead to 2-1.

“He’s come up clutch for this organization since Day 1,” captain Mark Stone said. “He’s a big-time player that steps up for us when we need it. And today was a huge goal.”

No one in this franchise’s short history has consistently come up with the big goal in the playoffs more than Marchessault.

Last round Vegas lost Game 1 to the Wild and fell behind by a goal in the second period as things started to look bleak. Marchessault scored 18 seconds later to tie it, Vegas grabbed the lead and won three games in a row on the way to a series victory.

It gets somewhat forgotten in the disaster that was the five-minute major in Game 7 against the Sharks in 2019, but after San Jose took a 4-3 lead it was Marchessault who scored to tie it with 47 seconds remaining in regulation.

Even going back to the inaugural season, in the Western Conference Final against Winnipeg he scored two goals in the Game 2 victory that rekindled the series and 35 seconds into Game 3 to set the tone.

Friday’s goal could join that pantheon. Vegas had outplayed the Avalanche consistently for five periods dating back to the middle stanza of Game 2, but lost in overtime in that game and found themselves on the wrong end of a 2-1 score in the third. Mikko Rantanen continued to terrorize the Golden Knights with his third goal in as many games this series, and Vegas’ season was nearing life support.

Then things started to turn. The push came from the Golden Knights and Marchessault brought the biggest crowd of the season — 100% capacity and 17,504 fans — to its feet.

He snuck in alone on goalie Philipp Grubauer and when Reilly Smith spotted him, Grubauer looked to be in position to block the initial shot. Instead Marchessault fanned on it, recollected and banked it off Grubauer and into the net.

The Golden Knights rode the wave of momentum into the next shift, where Max Pacioretty tipped home Nick Holden’s shot for the winner. Just like that, instead of facing the possibility of a sweep in Game 4, Vegas will have a chance to even the series heading back to Colorado on Tuesday.

“A huge goal,” forward William Karlsson said of Marchessault’s tally. “Time will tell how huge it’s going to be.”

He’s right in the aspect that as good as Vegas is feeling right now, it’s still trailing in this series despite being the better team for what has become the majority of it.

It was easy enough to shake off the Game 1 debacle, and the Golden Knights were clicking from the second period of Game 2 onward, and the overtime loss had the potential to send Vegas into a spiral. The home team scored first Friday, but the Avalanche scored the next two and all the Golden Knights’ domination of the puck would have been for naught if not for the goals from Marchessault and Pacioretty.

And it has been domination. At even strength since the second period of Game 2, the Golden Knights lead the Avalanche in shots (65-24), shot attempts (129-68), scoring chances (58-31), high-danger scoring chances (23-9) and expected goals (5.43-1.78), all according to advanced stats site Natural Stat Trick.

But the scoring wasn’t coming. Marchessault and Pacioretty saved the Golden Knights not only from a three-game hole, but also from the same narrative that plagued them against Vancouver and Dallas last year and even Minnesota at times this year — that no matter the possession numbers, they couldn’t score in the playoffs.

Things are far from fixed. All those numbers two paragraphs ago are fantastic, but it’s yielded just three five-on-five goals. But the momentum in the series is in the Vegas room now, which goes to show how important every goal in the playoffs is.

“Obviously we’re down 2-1 but we were the better team out there tonight,” Marchessault said. “Hopefully we can turn that around but now it’s all about next game.”

Since the first period of Game 2, the Golden Knights have held the Avalanche to just one goal at 5-on-5. The Avalanche have netted a few on the power play including Rantanen’s go-ahead tally Friday — and that area of the game remains an issue — but Vegas has more or less bottled up Colorado’s top line of Rantanen, Nathan MacKinnon and Gabriel Landeskog at evens for two games now.

Against them the Golden Knights have deployed their own top line of Pacioretty, Stone and Chandler Stephenson, who shut them down Friday so well that Avalanche coach Jared Bednar split them up to start the third period, then ripped them in his postgame press conference.

When Stone was on the ice against MacKinnon, the Golden Knights had a 6-0 edge in high-danger chances, and held the Avalanche to just 0.09 expected goals. All of that line’s dangerous chances came when Stone’s line was on the bench. And with the last change at home, the Golden Knights made sure that didn’t happen often.

“You’re not going to completely eliminate them,” Stone said. “They’re one of the best lines in the league for a reason, but we see ourselves as one of the best lines in the league as well.”

The Golden Knights outplayed what was statistically one of the best teams in a decade Friday night, and earned the result they didn’t get when they did the same on Wednesday in Game 2. They have the usual cast of characters to think for that — Marchessault and Pacioretty with the goals, Stone and Stephenson with the defense, and Marc-Andre Fleury in net who made a point-blank save on Rantanen with 46 second left in the game.

It was the encapsulation of one of coach Pete DeBoer’s favorite phrases: The Golden Knights’ best players were their best players, and they put them right back in this series.