2 weeks Ago By Paul Delos Santos, Dice City Sports
LAS VEGAS – It didn’t take long for Vegas Golden Knights forward William Karlsson to make his impact in his team’s 7-3 victory against the San Jose Sharks at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday. Karlsson found Tanner Pearson for a one-timer in his first shift that got the Golden Knights off and running. “First shift, he gets an assist.
He just does so many things throughout the game in all aspects. Special teams. Five-on-five,” Vegas defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said.
“He’s an elite centerman.” Vegas outshot San Jose 22-4 in the first period. The Golden Knights rode that dominance en route to a 3-0 lead after the initial 20 minutes with goals from Pearson, Jack Eichel and Brett Howden.
“We played well. (The first period) was our best probably single period of the season,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said. “At the end of the day, they were ready to go.
That’s our job as coaches to make sure they’re prepared. From there, the game took care of itself.” But when the Sharks cut the lead to 3-1 following a Mikael Granlund goal at 10:13 of the second period, Karlsson came up big to swing the momentum back in their favor.
Karlsson scored a short-handed goal less than a minute later, outracing San Jose goalie Vitek Vanecek to the puck in the San Jose offensive zone. He poked it away from Vanecek, before taking his time to pick his corner to score and reclaim the three-goal advantage. “I felt it didn’t have too much mustard on it, and it stopped there,” Karlsson said.
“I got there before their goalie. Just waited and waited. I wanted to hit ‘Pearse,’ but I didn’t feel like it.
Then I just shot it. Luckily, it went in.” Dorofeyev extended the lead near the end of the second period with a power-play goal, but the Sharks cut it back to a three-goal lead after Nico Sturm scored 15 seconds later.
Mark Stone made it 6-2 at 11:10 of the third period, but the Sharks scored again to make it 6-3. Howden added his second goal of the game at 17:07 for the final score. “Anytime you had a back-to-back, you got to keep things simple,” Pearson said.
“We had a good first period. We were able to hold it together for 60.” Paul Delos Santos is the Las Vegas sports insider for Dice City Sports.
Follow him on X at @PaulDelos_ . This article first appeared on Dice City Sports and was syndicated with permission..
