Jack Eichel scored two goals and had an assist to lead the Vegas Golden Knights to a 4-1 victory over the Utah Mammoth on Thursday night in Salt Lake City.
It was Eichel’s third two-goal game and also his fourth three-point game of the season. Shea Theodore had three assists, Braeden Bowman had a goal and an assist, and Ben Hutton also scored for Vegas, which extended its point streak to five games.
Akira Schmid made 25 saves for his ninth victory in 12 starts (9-1-2), tying his career high for wins in a season set in 2023-24 with the New Jersey Devils.
Nate Schmidt scored a goal and Karel Vejmelka finished with 29 saves for Utah, which suffered its fourth straight loss.
Vegas needed just 19 seconds to take a 2-0 lead early in the second period. Eichel started the scoring at the 3:09 mark with his first goal in 10 games, putting in a rebound of a Pavel Dorofeyev shot into an open net from the left doorstep.
Hutton, who scored his first goal since March 19, 2024, in Tuesday’s 3-2 victory over the New York Rangers, then took advantage of a failed clearing attempt by the Mammoth to beat Vejmelka with a wrist shot from the left circle. It marked just the second time in Hutton’s career that he scored goals in back-to-back games, and the first time since Nov. 6 and 8 in 2018 with Vancouver.
A little over three minutes later, Utah cut the lead to 2-1 on Schmidt’s first goal with the Mammoth, a wrist shot from the right circle past Schmid’s blocker side.
Eichel put the Golden Knights back up by two goals near the end of the period with a breakaway goal during a delayed penalty, taking a long bank pass off the boards by Bowman near the blue line and then cutting in and roofing a backhand shot.
Bowman, signed March 2 as an undrafted free agent, extended the lead to 4-1 with a tap-in of an Eichel cross-crease pass inside the right post just 45 seconds into the third period for his third goal in five career NHL games.
–Field Level Media
