Vegas' Mark Stone once again burns Wild with key plays

On March 1, Mark Stone had a five-assist night against the Wild, setting up Max Pacioretty's winner in overtime.

Thursday night, Stone was at it again, providing a couple of key plays as the Vegas Golden Knights defeated the Wild 5-2 in Game 3 of the West Division first-round playoff series. Stone scored the Golden Knights' first goal to start a comeback and capped it with an empty-net tally with 59 seconds to play.

"The right guys scored tonight," Vegas coach Peter DeBoer said. "Stoney needed to get a couple for us. He always brings effort. Just for his own mental pressure and the pressure he puts on himself, he needed to stick one in the net."

Stone led the Golden Knights in scoring with 20 goals and 41 assists in the regular season and had one assist in Vegas' 3-1 victory in Game 2. He found his stride in the second period Thursday, helping his team turn the game completely in its favor after the Wild took a 2-0 lead and had a third goal wiped out by a Golden Knights offside challenge.

"It definitely wasn't a good start. … We just weren't prepared," Stone said. "But it's better to be down 2-0 after 20. … Five or 10 minutes into the second we got a couple big saves to keep it at 2, and then we kind of took over the game."

First, though, Stone, the Vegas captain, helped get his team refocused in the first intermission, with the help of DeBoer.

"Honestly, I wasn't much of a voice," Stone said. "We have a lot of guys in that room that knew we needed to be better. We had a lot of guys step up. And I think we got a little smack from Pete to get us going. When you're down 2-0 in the first, you have 40 minutes to keep plugging away."

Said DeBoer: "The game was a long way from over. I felt we could win if we gave ourselves a chance to win."

Stone cut the Wild's lead to 2-1 at 8:39 of the second. Center Chandler Stephenson won a puck battle along the boards and passed to Stone, who was streaking alone down the middle. Stone fired a shot past Wild goalie Cam Talbot, deflating a Wild crowd of 4,500 watching its first home playoff game in three years.

Patrick Brown tied it at 15:19 of the second and, at 17:33, Reilly Smith gave Vegas the lead for good. Brown was playing in his first game since April 3, while Nick Holden, who assisted on both goals, was in his first contest since April 9.

"Both those guys were excellent," DeBoer said. "We don't win without both those guys. We talked at the beginning of the playoffs that we wanted to stick to the formula we used all year, and that was to not be afraid to use our depth. We had some guys who were a little fatigued after the first two games."

The Golden Knights outshot the Wild 22-5 in the second period and 14-4 in the third, squelching Minnesota's attempts to rally back. After William Karlsson made it 4-2 with 2:24 to play, Stone finished it with the empty-net tally.

"The last 35 minutes of the game," Stone said, "we took over, we dominated."