The Ducks outshot the Golden Knights 34-22 in Game 1 and lost 3-1 anyway. That's the story of the series so far in one sentence — Vegas didn't play their best hockey and still found a way, mostly because Carter Hart turned in a 33-save night that swung the game on its own.
Brett Howden, Ivan Barbashev, and Mitch Marner did the scoring for Vegas. Mikael Granlund got Anaheim on the board. William Karlsson also returned to the Vegas lineup for the first time since November 8 after a lower-body injury, which gives Vegas more depth than they had through most of round 1.
Anaheim has been here before. They dropped Game 1 of the first round to Edmonton and rattled off three straight to close that series out, so the locker room isn't going to panic about being down 0-1. The bigger concern is conversion — they generated 12 high-danger chances on Monday and put one past Hart. That math doesn't hold up if it stays the same.
The market is leaning hard on Vegas, with the home moneyline at -160 at Pinnacle and 65% of DK tickets piling onto the Knights. The puck-line is the more interesting read here — handle is split lopsidedly toward Vegas -1.5 even though Game 1 was a one-goal grinder that easily could have gone the other way. EV is slightly negative on every market, so this is a game to watch, not a game to chase.
- OutRadko Gudas D — out
Game 2 is at T-Mobile at 8:35 ET before the series swings to Honda Center. If Anaheim is going to steal home ice back, this is the night to do it — outplaying Vegas twice in a row and losing both is the kind of thing that ends seasons. Expect a bounce-back from the Knights' top line and a much sharper night from a team that knows it didn't earn the win it got.