Connelly's toe-drag with 1:42 left lifts Vegas past Detroit, 2-1
Daniil Tarasov's 32 saves kept the Red Wings in a taut, scoreless duel for two periods — then one late Golden Knights rush undid the whole night.
Games like this are where playoff seasons quietly get banked. The Vegas Golden Knights beat the Detroit Red Wings 2-1 on Thursday night at Little Caesars Arena, their second straight win on a four-game trip, moving to 11-5-2 (24 points). Detroit slipped to 7-7-3 with a second consecutive loss — a sour note in its lone home game across a seven-game stretch.
Two periods of nothing, then everything
Neither team scored through forty minutes. Daniil Tarasov stopped all 14 first-period shots, including a late chance from Ivan Barbashev, and Detroit's best look — an Emmitt Finnie short-handed breakaway in the second — slid wide. The second period also brought a fight between Detroit's Carter Mazur and Barbashev, per the AP report.
The dam broke early in the third. Anton Johansson put Detroit ahead at 2:02, pouncing on a Mazur shot that caromed off the end boards, his second of the season. Just over two minutes later, Braeden Bowman answered off a Tomas Hertl feed to make it 1-1 at 4:20.
The turning point
With 1:42 left in regulation, Jack Eichel found Trevor Connelly, who toe-dragged and beat Tarasov for the winner, per NHL.com. Detroit's 6-on-5 push came up empty. Tarasov finished with 32 saves in defeat; Carter Hart made 25 for Vegas.
"Made one mistake at the end, and it's in the net," Red Wings coach Todd McLellan said, crediting the goaltending while lamenting the lack of scoring support. Moritz Seider called Tarasov's saves huge and summed up the finish plainly: "We just got to be better."
What it means
Vegas keeps stacking points on the road and visits Buffalo on Sunday. Detroit, stuck at .500-ish and now heading out for four straight away games starting Saturday in Colorado, got a goaltending performance worth two points and converted it into zero. "We learn from it, and we bounce back against Colorado," Johansson said.