Golden Knights pull off 4-3 overtime victory against Senators

LAS VEGAS – Jonathan Marchessault had never attempted a penalty shot in his NHL career.

He made his first one count Sunday night.

Marchessault earned a penalty shot after being hooked by Mark Stone on what would have been a breakaway, and beat goalie Craig Anderson to lift the Vegas Golden Knights to a 4-3 overtime victory over the Ottawa Senators.

“I had one in the AHL, I think I did like almost the same move, I just went high glove,” said Marchessault, who leads Vegas with 11 points this season. “I kind of knew a little bit what I was going to do, I just waiting … I was able to put it where I wanted it.”

The Golden Knights rallied from trailing 2-0 early and avoided their second three-game losing streak, after consecutive losses at home.

Alex Tuch scored two goals and Ryan Reaves added his third of the season for Vegas, while Marc-Andre Fleury made 19 saves.

Matt Duchene, Bobby Ryan and Ryan Dzingel scored for the Senators, while Anderson made 49 saves.

The Golden Knights outshot Ottawa, 53-22. In their first 10 games, the Golden Knights had 37 or more shots on goal just four times. They had 37 shots through two periods.

“Things weren’t going well for us the first half of the game,” Vegas coach Gerard Gallant said. “We were working hard, everything was going well except the puck wasn’t going in the net and we found ourselves down 2-0. … If we would have lost tonight, I would have been upset with not getting the two points, but the way we played was outstanding.”

The victory, however, didn’t come without the Golden Knights losing another player to injury for the second consecutive game. After losing forward Max Pacioretty, who left Friday’s game after being drilled by Tampa Bay’s Braydon Coburn, forward Cody Eakin left Sunday’s game after being hit in the head by Mark Borowiecki in the first period.

“It was a big hit, I don’t think Borowiecki wanted to go over there and exactly hit Cody Eakin in the head,” Gallant said. “But the puck came to Cody right there and he was coming in with a lot of speed …. but I don’t think there was any intent to try and hurt the guy.”

Duchene gave the Senators an early 1-0 lead in the first period, and Ryan extended Ottawa’s lead midway through the second period, when he punched home the Senators’ first road power-play goal of the season.

“Our players are giving everything they’ve got, we talked about having 60 minutes of keeping it together and that’s exactly what our players did,” Ottawa coach Guy Boucher said. “That’s the difference with the previous two games (against) Boston and Colorado, where we played really good for two periods and then just because the other team scored, whether it’s the end of the second or beginning of the third, all of a sudden we start to get out of whack, impatient, lose our structure … we didn’t do that tonight. The composure was there the entire game. That’s a big building block for us.”

Tuch, who missed the first eight games of the season with a lower-body injury, notched his first goal of the season when he went forehand-backhand to deke Anderson and cut Ottawa’s lead in half. Reaves scored his first career power-play goal when he tied the game with 1:39 left in the second period.

Playing a nifty passing game of tic-tac-toe, Dzingel was the beneficiary as he scored his team-leading fourth road goal of the season to put Ottawa back on top. The lead didn’t last long, though, as Tuch scored his second goal 28 seconds later.

“It’s a big win, especially since we’re going on the road for two really hard games against two really good opponents,” Tuch said. “I thought we played really well today, we had a lot of shots, we had a lot of guys in front of the net, Craig Anderson played an unbelievable game, but we just kept battling.”