The reigning Stanley Cup champions, the Vegas Golden Knights, started the new season with a 4-1 win over the Seattle Kraken.
After a ceremony worthy of Las Vegas, the locals opened the scoring midway through the first period when Chandler Stephenson deceived Philipp Grubauer.
Jonathan Marchessault then doubled his team’s lead when he took advantage of a mistake by Brandon Tanev and easily scored. See the sequence above.
At the start of the third period, Ivan Barbashev scored the game-winning goal for the Golden Knights. Jared McCann was the visitors’ only goalscorer.
The Kraken had a golden chance to get back into the game in the final period when they took advantage of a five-minute power play but failed to capitalize.
A check from Brett Howden on top of Tanev was the origin of this long numerical lead.
In addition to losing the services of Howden due to his action, Vegas was also without the services of William Carrier, who left the game with an upper body injury.