Stars Are One Win Away From Winning the West

The Golden Knights’ best chance to tie the game came late in the third period, when they had a 5-on-3 power play for 1 minute 10 seconds with Pavelski and Jason Dickinson both in the penalty box on tripping calls. After Vegas Coach Peter DeBoer called a timeout, Max Pacioretty set up to anchor the two-man advantage from the right face-off dot. The Golden Knights recorded three shots with at 5 on 3 and one at 5 on 4. Khudobin stopped them all on the way to his 11th win of the postseason, second only to Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy, who has 12.

“He’s a battler, he’s a competitive guy,” Stars Coach Rick Bowness said of Khudobin. “We’ve seen this for two years now, but that’s what he is. He’s going to battle right till the end.”

Golden Knights defenseman Alec Martinez was the only player to score on Khudobin on Saturday, with a slap shot on the power play that beat him high to the blocker side to open the scoring 7:44 into the second period.

“I thought we created some really good looks,” DeBoer said. “I think we had two or three posts so, with one goal, you know, we’ve got to find other ways to make it tougher on them but the effort’s there to do that.”

“It seemed like every shift was pretty much the same thing,” Vegas forward Reilly Smith said. “We’re getting shots through, but we’re just not finding the rebounds.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/12/sports/hockey/dallas-stars-vegas-golden-knights-playoffs.html