*Photo from Reuters*
The last unbeaten team in the league is no longer. Ryan Donato scored, Philipp Kurashev won the game, and the Chicago Blackhawks defeated the Vegas Golden Knights with a 4-3 overtime victory on Friday night in Las Vegas.
The Blackhawks are sitting at 3-5-0 through 8 games but have ended the unbeaten run of the defending champion Golden Knights. 8 different players recorded a point for the Blackhawks, who ended a 3 game losing streak with the win.
Kurashev said of the win that "It's great for us. We're young team and we beat the defending champs, so it's a great confidence boost for us. We can learn a lot from it and take good things from it, and hopefully we can build on something."
Pavel Dorofeyev gave the Golden Knights an early 1-0 lead just 1:35 into the game. William Karlsson then scored his 3rd goal of the season to double the lead to 2-0. At the 13:20 mark of the period, Donato got the Blackhawks on the board, cutting the deficit to 2-1. Connor Bedard then scored to make it 2-2 after one period of play.
After a scoreless second period, Taylor Raddysh gave the Blackhawks a 3-2 lead in the 3rd period with an unassisted goal. At the 11:28 mark of the period, Shea Theodore tied the game 3-3 with his 3rd goal of the season. In overtime, Kurashev scored on the power play 2:50 into the extra frame, giving the Blackhawks the 4-3 win.
Kurashev said of his OT goal that "It wasn’t the best-looking 4-on-3 I ever saw, but we got it done. We were trying to get the puck on net and luckily it went in. It was a long shift too. I just saw an opportunity to shoot it and it went in."
The starting goalie for the Blackhawks was Petr Mrazek, who got the win to improve to 2-3-0 on the season. Mrazek made 18 saves on 21 shots that he was tested with by the Golden Knights, giving him a .857 save percentage.
Getting the start for Vegas in between the pipes was Adin Hill, who got the overtime loss. Hill turned aside 20 out of the 24 shots on goal that the Blackhawks had, which was good for a .833 save percentage as his record dropped to 4-0-1 this season.
After the game, Vegas head coach Bruce Cassidy said of the loss that "We mismanaged pucks all night. We didn’t execute at an NHL level for most of the night and it ended up catching up to us. It happens sometimes, and tonight was one of those afternoons."
Vegas gets back in action on Saturday against the Los Angeles Kings, with Logan Thompson starting the second half of a back to back. The Blackhawks take on the Arizona Coyotes on Monday, with Mrazek the projected starter.
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