Golden Knights miss opportunity in Game 3 of Western Final

The Vegas Golden Knights felt they missed an opportunity in a 3-2 overtime loss to the Dallas Stars in Game 3 of the Western Conference Final on Thursday.

"Obviously, it's frustrating, but we're not going to throw ourselves a pity party," Vegas forward Alex Tuch said. "We're not going to blame it on anyone. It's all 20 guys in our locker room that played tonight, and no matter how much we felt like we should have won that game, we didn't. And now we've got to move on to Game 4."
Dallas leads the best-of-7 series 2-1 entering Game 4 at Rogers Place in Edmonton, the hub city for the conference finals and Stanley Cup Final, on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; NBC, CBC, SN, TVAS).;
"I thought we played pretty well," Golden Knights forward Mark Stone said. "We had opportunities to win the game."

Vegas outshot Dallas in the first period 12-4. Stone hit the crossbar early in the second, but the Stars ended up outshooting the Golden Knights 14-10 and took a 1-0 lead with 17 seconds left in the period on a breakaway by defenseman Jamie Oleksiak.
In the third, Vegas outshot Dallas 18-4, came back twice from down a goal, and had a chance to take the lead late. Defenseman Shea Theodore tied it 1-1 with a power-play goal at 3:49, and after Dallas forward Jamie Benn made it 2-1 at 7:35, Stone tied it 2-2 at 12:46 when Tuch's initial shot hit him in front. The Stars challenged the play for goaltender interference, but the call was upheld after a video review, resulting in a Golden Knights power play for delay of game.
But Vegas failed to score, and Dallas ended up winning on a goal by forward Alexander Radulov 31 seconds into overtime.
"We put a lot of work in tonight," Vegas coach Peter DeBoer said. "I liked our first period. I thought in the second, they pushed back, and then I thought in the third we responded again. (We) had a bunch of chances to win the game in the last five minutes of the third.
"It was one of those nights. They were opportunistic, and that's what they are. The puck got on the wrong guy's stick in the wrong spots tonight for us, Benn and Radulov with a little bit of room. Those guys stick pucks in the net when they get those looks."

Stars goalie Anton Khudobin made 38 saves after he was replaced at the start of the third period in Game 2 by rookie Jake Oettinger. With Dallas No. 1 Ben Bishop unfit to play, Khudobin has played 14 straight games, starting 13.
"We've got to make it difficult," Stone said. "This goalie has played a lot of hockey. We've got to continue to push, put pressure on them. I think we've just got to keep battling them down. I think territorially, we've had the puck most of the last two games."
Vegas had 62.4 percent of the shot attempts in Game 3 after having 57.7 percent of them in Game 2.
"It's playoff hockey," Tuch said. "It's not going to be cute. It's not going to be making unbelievable plays every time you score. It's going to be hard and gritty, and that's what we're looking to do. We're just looking to score goals whatever way we can."