Golden Knights benefit from no-call, take Game 1 from Ducks

Danny Webster, Las Vegas Review-Journal on May 5, 2026

Published in Hockey

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Call it experience playing until the final whistle, or the Force being with the Vegas Golden Knights on Star Wars Day.

Either way, they benefited from it and find themselves ahead in the series.

Ivan Barbashev broke a tie with 4:58 to go after the linesman appeared to waive off a potential icing, and the Knights held on to defeat the Anaheim Ducks 3-1 in Game 1 of their second-round series at T-Mobile Arena on Monday.

Game 2 is Wednesday at T-Mobile.

Center Jack Eichel was in lockstep with Anaheim defenseman Jackson LaCombe and appeared to lose the race to the puck.

The call was waived off, play continued and Barbashev scored on a weak-side finish from Pavel Dorofeyev to give the Knights a 2-1 lead.

“I just tried to put the puck deep and I think I saw Jack on the far side,” Barbashev said. ” I thought for a second he hit him, and that’s why they waived it off. I thought Jack put pressure on him and he turned it over, and Pav made a great play.”

Brett Howden scored his fifth goal in the last four games, and Mitch Marner had a goal and an assist, giving the Knights their fourth straight win since falling behind 2-1 in the first round to the Utah Mammoth.

Carter Hart made 33 saves and carried a shutout into the third for the second game in a row.

Ducks center Mikael Granlund tied it with 6:03 remaining off a pass from LaCombe through traffic. Barbashev broke the tie 1 minute, 5 seconds later.

“Clearly, I disagreed with the call,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said. “Their guy stopped skating.”

Given the way both teams played in the first round, you’d expect more up-and-down action.

The Ducks had that, to a degree, in the first period. They were the ones with odd-man rushes and dangerous scoring chances.

“They were the better team tonight,” coach John Tortorella said.

But Hart, who played well in the three straight wins to close out the Utah series, was up to the task early with 11 saves in the opening 20 minutes.

Hart kept his teammates in it as they slowly tried to break through Anaheim’s pressure and get their puck management back in order.

“He was our best player tonight,” Tortorella said.

The Knights powered through at 3:14 of the second with Howden scoring for the fourth straight game with a backdoor tap-in from Marner.

The Ducks’ best chance came off an unreal effort from center Leo Carlsson after Howden’s goal.

The 21-year-old spun away from Noah Hanifin, cut to the left circle and found LaCombe alone for an easy goal.

Instead, he passed up the open net and gave it to winger Troy Terry instead and was stopped by Hart.

Center William Karlsson played 11:03 in his return to the lineup after missing nearly six months with a lower-body injury. Karlsson had one shot and went 7-of-13 in the faceoff circle.

Defenseman Ben Hutton also made his postseason debut in place of the injured Jeremy Lauzon (upper body), but the veteran defenseman was held to a team-low 8:41 of ice time.

“I don’t think anyone in our locker room is satisfied with that win,” Marner said. “We know we have to be better.”

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