The Vegas Golden Knights erased a three-goal deficit and beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-3 in a shootout on Oct. 8, 2026, at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, with rookie Trevor Connelly scoring the deciding goal in the fifth round.
Toronto led 3-0 less than nine minutes into its first road game of the season, but Vegas tied the game before the second period was four minutes old, and Sergei Bobrovsky’s 40 saves were not enough as the Golden Knights outshot the Leafs 43-24.
Jack Roslovic opened the scoring 34 seconds in, banking the puck in off goaltender Adin Hill’s pad from below the goal line, according to the NHL.com recap. It was the second-fastest goal to start a Maple Leafs road opener, behind Stew Gavin’s goal 27 seconds in at Edmonton on Oct. 5, 1983. Roslovic was playing his 600th NHL game, and the goal was his 300th career point, ESPN reported.
Easton Cowan made it 2-0 at 3:20 with a breakaway wrist shot, and Nick Paul tipped in a Darren Raddysh point shot at 8:37 for a 3-0 lead. Auston Matthews and Gavin McKenna each picked up an assist.
Mark Stone got Vegas on the board with a slap shot over Bobrovsky’s glove at 17:36 of the first period. Brett Howden finished a pass from former Leaf Mitch Marner at the far post 1:12 into the second, and Jack Eichel tied it 3-3 at 3:58 on a penalty shot after Morgan Rielly tripped him on a breakaway.
Hill then shut Toronto out through the rest of regulation and overtime. He finished with 21 saves and stopped four of the Leafs’ five shootout attempts. Kirill Marchenko scored Toronto’s only shootout goal, while Braeden Bowman and Connelly scored for Vegas, ESPN reported.
Connelly became the third Golden Knights rookie to score a game-deciding shootout goal, after Alex Tuch in 2017 and Paul Cotter in 2022, and the win was the fifth three-goal comeback in franchise history, according to NHL.com.
“It’s a big point for us on the road against a good team,” Bobrovsky said after the game, NHL.com reported.
Eichel has points in all five Vegas games, with three goals and nine assists. Vegas went 0-for-4 on the power play, its first game this season without a power-play goal, but improved to 4-1-0 with its third straight win and sits first in the Pacific Division.
The Leafs are 2-2-1 and fifth in the Atlantic Division. Toronto continues its road trip in Colorado on Saturday, Oct. 10, while Vegas hosts the Los Angeles Kings the same night.
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Sources: NHL.com and ESPN game recaps. Photo: Jack Eichel during warmups on Feb. 27, 2026, by The Kip, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. File photo, not from the game described.
