Samsonov makes 35 saves, Golden Knights defeat Lightning for 3rd win in row

LAS VEGAS -- Ilya Samsonov made 35 saves for the Vegas Golden Knights in a 4-2 win against the Tampa Bay Lightning at T-Mobile Arena on Sunday.

“'Sammy’ has been really good for us,” Vegas forward Nicolas Roy said. “Player of the game for sure today. … He’s been confident lately and it’s good to see. Really good game from him.”

Roy, Tomas Hertl, Jack Eichel and Nicolas Hague scored for the Golden Knights (42-20-8), who have won three in a row and are in first in the Pacific Division, five points ahead of the Los Angeles Kings and Edmonton Oilers. Alex Pietrangelo had two assists.

“We defended pretty well,” Pietrangelo said. “A lot of our offense comes from when we take care of our end. I know we gave up [37] shots, but I thought we did a really good job around our net. We're defending well, especially on the rush, and it seems like tonight they're really good on the rush. I just feel like three different teams. Three different [standing] positions, but we can play any style, right? We can adjust to who we're playing against.”

Hertl, who has scored seven goals in his past eight games, left the game favoring his right arm at 14:11 of the third period after being boarded by Emil Lilleberg.

“He's getting evaluated now and again tomorrow,” Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said. “He was sore when he came off, so we'll see. We'll maybe get good news tomorrow.”

Nick Paul and Nikita Kucherov scored, and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 26 saves for the Lightning (40-25-5), who lost 6-4 at the Utah Hockey Club on Saturday.

Tampa Bay is third in the Atlantic, two points behind the Toronto Maple Leafs.

“We had a lot of great looks,” Lightning forward Brandon Hagel said. “We believe we're a really good hockey team over here. We have 12 games. That's kind of the message in here. Throw out the guys and let's start building something here. It's not just a light switch that turns on 12 games from now. It's got to start now. I like that for tonight. Obviously, can we get better? Absolutely. But we've just got to continue to build on it. It can't be one good, one bad, one good, one bad. We need to stay together.”

Roy made it 1-0 at 11:02 of the first period, scoring a power-play goal with a shot that went in off the crossbar.

Hertl made it 2-0 from the high slot at 13:33, and Eichel one-timed a Zach Whitecloud pass at 19:13 to extend it to 3-0.

“Him and I actually work on that in practice just to fool around and stuff,” Whitecloud said. “He's been working with me to help get a little bit better vision in the offensive zone and stuff like that, so when you see [Eichel] with open space like that, you try and get him to puck, so he did the rest.”

Paul roofed a wrist shot at 17:38 of the second period to cut it to 3-1.

Hague scored an empty-net goal at 17:18 to make it 4-1.

Kucherov scored on the power play at 19:55 for the 4-2 final. It was the forward's 350th NHL goal and marked the eighth time in which he has scored 30 goals in a season.

“[The pushback] was fine. But pushback for what?” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “In the end, they got a lead. They’re comfortable with it. That’s what they wanted to do. They could have played four more periods and still had it. We couldn’t give them the lead like that like we did. That was too much for us.”

NOTES: Eichel extended his home point streak to eight games (15 points; three goals, 12 assists). … Kucherov has a point in 12 straight games (21 points; five goals, 16 assists) against the Golden Knights.