Golden Knights top Lightning for third straight win

Ilya Samsonov turned away 35 of 37 shots to lead the Vegas Golden Knights to their third straight victory, 4-2 over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday night in Las Vegas.

Jack Eichel, Tomas Hertl, Nicolas Roy and Nicolas Hague scored goals and Alex Pietrangelo had two assists for Vegas (42-20-8, 92 points), which extended its Pacific Division lead to five points with the victory.

Nick Paul and Nikita Kucherov scored goals and Andrei Vasilevskiy finished with 26 saves for Tampa Bay (40-25-5, 85 points), which fell to four points behind first-place Florida in the Atlantic Division after the Panthers' win over Pittsburgh earlier Sunday.

Vegas took a 1-0 lead at the 11:02 mark of the first period on a power-play goal by Roy, who roofed a crossing pass from William Karlsson over Vasilevskiy's right shoulder.

Two-and-a-half minutes later, Hertl made it 2-0 with his fourth goal in two games, snapping a wrist shot from the top of the slot around defenseman Victor Hedman and past Vasilevskiy's blocker side.

Eichel extended the lead to 3-0 with 47 seconds left in the period with a one-timer from the left circle into the top far corner off a Zach Whitecloud pass.

Tampa Bay, playing its third road game in four nights, finally broke through late in the second period when Paul finished a two-on-one rush with a wrist shot from the right circle into the top far corner.

The Lightning pulled Vasilevskiy for an extra attacker with three minutes remaining and Hague sealed the win 18 seconds later with an empty-netter.

Kucherov ended the scoring with a 6-on-4 power-play goal with just five seconds remaining, one-timing a shot from the right circle for his 30th goal of the season.

Hertl left the game with 5:49 remaining and didn't return after landing heavily with his left shoulder and arm against the bottom of the end boards after Vasilevskiy stopped his breakaway try. Defenseman Emil Lilleberg picked up a two-minute boarding penalty on the play.

--Field Level Media