Kings rally for shootout win against Golden Knights

LAS VEGAS – Quinton Byfield and Andrei Kuzmenko each had a goal and an assist to help the Los Angeles Kings rally for a 6-5 shootout victory against the Vegas Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena on Wednesday.

Trevor Moore and Adrian Kempe scored in the shootout for Los Angeles.

The Kings scored twice in a 2:41 span in the third period to rally from a two-goal deficit.

Moore cut the Vegas lead to 5-4 at 11:39 with a short-handed goal, beating Adin Hill on a breakaway. Brandt Clarke tied the game 5-5 at 14:00 when he guided in a pass from Byfield as he crashed the net.

Jeff Malott also scored, and Anton Forsberg made 30 saves for the Kings (1-1-0).

“We were able to come back. We were able to win, and that feels good, doesn't it?” Kings coach Jim Hiller said. “We were pretty tight until the power play was the turning point. Then we got loose, and we were chasing it, and the goalie made saves, held us. He made some good saves. Then just some really nice goals: ‘Morsi's’ was pretty much a solo effort, but ‘Clarkie’ had Kuzmenko to Byfield, and let's drive the middle.”

Pavel Dorofeyev had a hat trick, and Jack Eichel had a goal and three assists for the Golden Knights in their season opener. Ivan Barbashev had a goal and an assist, and Mitch Marner had two assists in his first game with Vegas. Hill made 21 saves.

“It's frustrating to give up a two-goal lead in the third,” Eichel said. “We'll learn from that and be better for it. But there were some things to like. Obviously, we were down a few, got back in the game, got the lead. We want to be able to close those out.”

Kuzmenko gave the Kings a 1-0 lead at 4:41 of the first period with a wrist shot from above the right circle on the power play.

Byfield extended it to 2-0 at 11:57, scoring on a breakaway after intercepting a pass from Jeremy Lauzon.

Dorofeyev cut the lead to 2-1 at 2:10 of the second period. He stole the puck at the Vegas blue line, skated into the zone, and fired a shot that went in off the right post.

Malott scored his first NHL goal when he tipped in a Joel Armia shot at 13:41 to make it 3-1.

“I had a feeling [it was my goal], but it's so hard to tell. A bit of a traffic jam in front,” Malott said. “I felt something. I needed to wait because last time I celebrated a little too early.”

Dorofeyev scored his second goal of the game at 17:32 to make it 3-2, finishing a cross-ice pass from Mark Stone into an open net on the power play. He completed the hat trick with another power-play goal to tie it 3-3 at 19:14.

“The fact that he could finish from over there really makes it tough on teams to get what coverage you're gonna have,” Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said. “They just picked off where they left last year. It was an important time of the game for us.”

Eichel gave the Golden Knights a 4-3 lead at 5:06 of the third period, one-timing a cross-ice pass from Marner.

“The pass was a fantastic pass,” said Eichel, who signed an eight-year, $108 million contract extension earlier in the day. “The first game was good. We’ll only continue to get better. A few plays that we probably want back. There were some good things to like, some stuff to build off.”

Barbashev tapped in a pass from Eichel into a wide-open net at 8:43 to push the lead to 5-3.

“It's going to be fun [playing with Marner and Eichel],” Barbashev said. “There are still a lot of things we can work on moving forward, especially in the O-zone.”

NOTES: Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty earned their 607th regular-season win as teammates, tying Gordie Howe and Alex Delvecchio for the fifth-most by a duo in NHL history. The only duos with more: Nicklas Lidstrom and Kris Draper (664), Henrik and Daniel Sedin (662), Larry Robinson and Bob Gainey (643) and Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin (619). … Dorofeyev’s hat trick was the first of the 2025-26 season, and he became the first Golden Knights player to score three goals in the team’s season-opening game. The last player to do so for any team was Nikita Kucherov on Oct. 11, 2024.