Tyler Toffoli finished off his sixth career hat trick by scoring 2:35 into overtime as the New Jersey Devils rallied for a wild 6-5 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday in Newark, N.J.
The Devils blew a 3-1 lead but overcame a 5-3 deficit thanks to Toffoli.
Toffoli scored New Jersey’s third goal 97 seconds into the second period and its fourth goal with 16 seconds left in the period before his dramatic game-winner.
The winning sequence started with a key defensive play by defenseman Luke Hughes, who intercepted an errant clearing pass by Vegas center Paul Cotter in the neutral zone. Hughes motored down the left side, faked a shot to get goalie Logan Thompson to go down and passed to Toffoli.
Toffoli got by Jonathan Marchessault and sent a shot from the bottom of the right circle into the net for his 20th goal of the season.
Curtis Lazar scored twice, including the tying goal midway through the third, and Nico Hischier also scored for the Devils, who rebounded from Saturday’s 6-2 loss to the Dallas Stars.
Marchessault scored twice in a four-goal second for the Golden Knights, who saw a three-game winning streak stopped and lost their seventh straight road game. Chandler Stephenson, Nicolas Roy and Pavel Dorofeyev also scored for the defending champions, who dropped to 18-1-2 when leading through 40 minutes.
Thompson allowed six goals on 38 shots while New Jersey’s Vitek Vanecek made 27 saves.
After Dorofeyev finished off an odd-man rush a little over six minutes in, the Devils scored twice in the final 4:39 of the first as Hischier buried a no-look pass from Timo Meier and Lazar converted Erik Haula’s centering feed.
Toffoli scored his first goal after coming off the bench on a line change early in the second before the Golden Knights scored the next four.
Marchessault made it a one-goal game 7:39 into the second by converting an easy tap-in into the vacated left side of the net after Roy re-directed a shot by Kaedan Korczak. He then tied it by finishing off a 2-on-1 with Ivan Barbashev with 10 minutes left.
Stephenson scored 48 seconds after Marchessault’s second tally by re-directing a feed from Mark Stone into the net. Roy made it a two-goal game with 52 seconds left by converting Marchessault’s pass from behind the net.
Toffoli made it 5-4 by slipping a shot under Thompson from the left circle.
–Field Level Media
