Winnipegger Stone has big impact for Vegas in Game 2

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This article was published 21/04/2023 (917 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was only a matter of time before Mark Stone made his, well, mark against his hometown club after a long layoff owing to a nagging back injury.

The Winnipeg native had his coming-out party of sorts Thursday night, as Stone scored twice in the third period and added an assist to propel his Vegas Golden Knights to a 5-2 win over the Winnipeg Jets in front of a raucous sold-out crowd of 18,333 at T-Mobile Arena. The victory evened the first-round, best-of-seven series at 1-1, with Game 3 and Game 4 set for Winnipeg Saturday afternoon and Monday night.

“Since I got traded here, this is the team I want to play for, the team I want to win with, go to war with,” Stone said after the game. “So, just to be back in there means the world to me. It’s the playoffs, you got to take it one game at a time, but I don’t want to miss this, I want to be part of it.”

Stone had missed the last three months of the regular season with a back injury that required surgery. He returned to game action for the first time on Tuesday but was held off the scoresheet, finishing the night a minus-3 in 21:28 of ice time, as the Jets skated to a 5-1 win and an early series lead.

The 30-year-old had a slow start to Game 2 but came alive in the final 20 minutes, beginning with an assist on Chandler Stephenson’s game-winning goal at the 5:37 mark. He followed that up with scorning twice over a span of under five minutes, ultimately sealing the victory.

“Pretty sub-par five periods for me,” Stone said. “I didn’t really feel that great but you’re lying if you say you don’t get energized by a point or goal. So, it was just good to get that one out of the way and a huge win for us.”

Stone finished off a nice passing play for his first marker, tapping home a puck that was delivered perfectly by Stephenson to his stick inside the crease. He then fired home a shot from the deep slot that deflected off the stick of Jets defenceman Nate Schmidt and over the blocker of Connor Hellebuyck.

Each goal elicited a passion-filled celebration from Stone. The reaction only further fuelled the Golden Knights, as they all got a boost watching their leader return to form.

“We love it. We know Stoney is an emotional guy and it’s great to see him back. Obviously, he had a huge night for us tonight,” said Vegas forward Jack Eichel, who put the Golden Knights up 2-1 midway through the second period with his first NHL playoff goal. “Just to think about all the adversity he’s gone through and everything that he’s worked through and battled to get back here and be on the ice with us, can’t say enough about him. I’m so happy to see him get rewarded there. He’s our captain for a reason. He brings it every night and his emotions just run through the team.”

A big part of Winnipeg’s success in Game 1 was its top line of Mark Scheifele, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Kyle Connor limiting the likes of Stone and Eichel, a duo that finished the game a minus-6. On Thursday, the script was flipped, with Scheifele, Dubois and Connor a combined minus-6.

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“You know those guys are dangerous when they’re out there. That’s the way the game goes,” Scheifele said. “We just have to take it shift-by-shift and mitigate those guys feeling good. They’re trying to do the same thing to us. We’ve just got to put this one behind us and be ready for Saturday.”

Jets head coach Rick Bowness tipped his cap to the Golden Knights, noting their best players played the role and way they’re expected to. Now, as the series shifts back to Winnipeg, he hopes the same can be said for his group in Game 3.

“They’re great players. There are going to come games in this series that you’re going to notice them. That’s not a surprise,” Bowness said. “A ton of respect for that team over there. They have a lot of great talent. There are going to be times that their top end guys look really good. Now we’re going to rely, going home, that our top guys look really good.”

Jeff.Hamilton@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jeffkhamilton

Jeff Hamilton
Multimedia producer

Jeff Hamilton is a sports and investigative reporter. Jeff joined the Free Press newsroom in April 2015, and has been covering the local sports scene since graduating from Carleton University’s journalism program in 2012. Read more about Jeff.

Every piece of reporting Jeff produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.