Marner, Knights come out on top over his former team

LAS VEGAS — The day Mitch Marner had been anticipating, and perhaps dreading for months, finally arrived Thursday.

Marner, who grew up outside Toronto, rooted for the Maple Leafs as a kid, was drafted by his favorite team and spent nine years wearing the blue and white and becoming an NHL star in the process, faced his old mates at T-Mobile Arena as a member of the Vegas Golden Knights in the lead storyline of several that attached itself to what was an important game for both teams.

The Leafs held two-goal leads on three separate occasions only to see the Knights battle back, force overtime and ultimately win it 6-5 on Jack Eichel’s backhand with 2:16 remaining. For Vegas, it was its league-leading 19th extra period contest of the season and it also extended the Knights’ win streak to six.  

“It was great,” Marner said as Vegas won in OT for the second straight night after beating the Kings 3-2 in Los Angeles Wednesday. “We stayed in the fight and obviously this one meant a lot more to me. We got the win and a lot of guys put forth a lot of effort.”

Tomas Hertl, who sent the game to overtime with his goal which came with just seven seconds left, said it's never easy and a weird feeling when you face your former team for the first time.

"It wasn't a great start but we came back and obviously happy for Mitch," Hertl said. "It's nice to beat your old team."

Not only did you have Marner going up against his former team, Nic Roy, whose name is on the Stanley Cup as a member of the Golden Knights and was in the trade that sent Marner to Vegas, returned to T-Mobile and got a nice ovation during the first period after the team prepared a tribute video to honor Roy.

There was the return of Adin Hill to the VGK crease after a lower-body injury suffered back on Oct. 20 shelved him for nearly three months. It was only the sixth start of the year for the 29-year-old goaltender.

Normally, any of those might’ve been strong enough to carry the day. But Thursday was about No. 93. And if you thought his facing the Leafs was big, wait until next Friday when the two teams meet again in Toronto. That may make John Tavares’ hate-filled return to Long Island in 2019 feel like a lovefest by comparison.  

Marner, who signed an eight-year $96 million deal with the Knights, has had an interesting first season with Vegas. There was all the preseason speculation about how he would do playing on the same line with Jack Eichel. And after a slow start which saw Bruce Cassidy put Marner on a different line, he started to pick up his production. He also accepted a move from right wing to center in late December and has been playing in the middle between Reilly Smith and Pavel Dorofeyev on what is the Knights’ second line while also operating at the point on the power play.

The result?  

Marner has averaged more than a point a game. in 45 games, he has 11 goals and 36 assists for 47 points. Since he moved to center on Dec. 21, he has five goals and eight assists 11 games (he moved back to wing for one game vs. Chicago on Jan. 4).

He said recently he’s getting more comfortable with the position he last played while in junior hockey, though he admitted he’d like to improve his faceoffs. But Smith and Dorofeyev are proving to be effective linemates and by being in the middle, Marner gets a little more freedom to create and use his superior skating skills to get open.

Thursday, he set up Dorofeyev’s first-period power play goal, drawing boos from the sizable contingent of blue-clad Leafs fans among the 17,975 in attendance. And whenever Marner had possession of the puck, he heard it from those Toronto fans, a prelude to what awaits him next week.

“I think once they dropped the puck it felt like a regular hockey game out there,” said Marner, who had a pair of assists Thursday. “Honestly, I know a lot of those guys really well and I just tried to read off some of the plays. But yeah, you always want to beat your buddies.”

As for Hill, well, to say he was shaky in his return to action would be a massive understatement. He was beaten on the second shot he faced and allowed three of the first 10 shots he faced to get past him.

He would eventually settle down but he was far from being his old self. However, his teammates found enough in the tank to keep Vegas in it and ultimately bail him out. The Knights got as close as 4-3 2:10 into the third as Dorofeyev scored his second power play goal of the night. Then Mark Stone made it 5-4 midway through the period.

Dorofeyev appeared to have registered a hat trick with 4:13 to go and tie it, but the goal was wiped out after Toronto’s Craig Berube challenged successfully that the play was offsides.

But Tomas Hertl, the NHL’s First Star of the Week, forced overtime with seven seconds left as Eichel set him up and he beat Woll clean from in front.

It would set the stage for Eichel’s heroics and perhaps a moment in the season where the team showed its resiliency more often than it had in other comebacks.

“You never know,” Cassidy said when asked if this was a defining moment in his team’s season. “It depends on how the rest of (the season) goes. We think it has got the ability where guys can look back and draw on.

“Things didn’t go our way early. But we stuck with it and we found a way to win an important game for a lot of guys in the room, especially Mitch.

“Let’s call it what it is. It’s his former team and a lot of people have been there. You want to play well and I think the guys understood that. We were going to play to the last whistle and that’s what it took. So that’s what guys may draw on.”