Stone’s hat trick lifts Golden Knights past Flames 6-2

LAS VEGAS – Mark Stone scored a natural hat trick in the third period as the Vegas Golden Knights beat the Calgary Flames 6-2 on Thursday night at T-Mobile Arena.

Stone scored at 1:06, 12:10 and 16:13 of the third period. He tapped in a backdoor feed from Jack Eichel for the first, scored on the rebound of a Noah Hanifin shot on the power play for the second, and finished the hat trick for his second regular-season hat trick and his first since Jan. 15, 2024.

“I like playing hockey, I like playing in this league, I like scoring goals,” Stone said.

Brett Howden scored 25 seconds into the game on a backhand stretch pass from Mitch Marner, and Eichel made it 2-0 at 9:34 of the first period, intercepting a Yegor Sharangovich pass in the neutral zone and scoring short-handed on a breakaway. Braeden Bowman added a power-play goal at 11:03 of the second period, a one-timer from the right circle set up by Ivan Barbashev.

Eichel finished with a goal and two assists, and Barbashev had three assists.

“Everybody’s stepping up,” Barbashev said of Vegas’s depth scoring.

Carter Hart made 28 saves for the win. Dustin Wolf stopped 27 shots for Calgary.

Jake Middleton scored short-handed at 10:15 of the second period to cut the lead to 2-1 for the Flames, but Bowman restored the two-goal margin less than a minute later. Matt Coronato scored on the power play at 18:40 of the third period for the final goal.

“We didn’t start as well as we could have,” Middleton said.

Flames coach Ryan Huska said his team cannot give opponents leads like that early in a game.

Vegas improved to 7-2-0 and has won six of its past seven games. Calgary fell to 1-6-0 after a 4-2 win at Anaheim on Tuesday.

The Golden Knights were already on top of our NHL power rankings after the first week of the season.

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Via NHL.com and ESPN.