Ivan Barbashev scored two goals and Logan Thompson made 29 saves to lead the Vegas Golden Knights to a 5-1 victory over the New York Rangers on Thursday night in Las Vegas.
It was the eighth multigoal game of Barbashev’s career. Jonathan Marchessault and Brett Howden each had a goal and an assist and Keegan Kolesar also scored for Vegas, which improved to 17-5-2 at home.
Nicolas Roy and Mark Stone both had two assists for the Golden Knights, who won back-to-back games for the first time since Dec. 6-12, when they captured fourth straight.
Mika Zibanejad snapped an eight-game goalless streak with a power-play goal for New York, which was playing the first game of a four-game Western road trip. Igor Shesterkin stopped 21 of 25 shots.
Vegas took a 1-0 lead at the 11:35 mark of the first period. Marchessault took a drop pass from Roy at the bottom of the right circle and fired a shot under Shesterkin’s right arm for his 19th goal.
Barbashev made it 2-0 a little over three minutes later when Roy’s crossing pass from the right wing caromed in off his left skate and inside the left post.
The Golden Knights broke the game open with a pair of goals in a 25-second span late in the second period to extend their lead to 4-0.
On a power play, Stone sent a pass from the goal line into the low slot, and Barbashev roofed a shot for his 11th goal at 17:59. Kolesar followed with his first goal in 15 games, deflecting a Kaedan Korczak shot under Shesterkin’s glove for his third goal of the season.
Zibanejad cut it to 4-1 with a power-play goal 40 seconds into the third period. He buried a tip pass from Chris Kreider into an open left side of the net for his ninth goal in 11 career games against the Golden Knights.
Howden finished the scoring with an empty-net, short-handed goal with 1:28 to go.
–Field Level Media
