Golden Knights Pull Away Late in Nashville: Five Different Scorers in a 5-2 Win Over the Predators

NASHVILLE, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2026

The Vegas Golden Knights spent two periods trading punches with the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night, and then, in the space of about twenty minutes of game time, they simply took the game away. Vegas beat Nashville 5-2 at Bridgestone Arena, with five different Golden Knights scoring, a penalty shot stopped at the moment the night could have tilted, and two goals 1:35 apart early in the third period that turned a tight road game into a comfortable finish. Reuters and Field Level Media, NHL.com, and the Tennessean all reported the same shape to the night: Nashville started it, Vegas answered every time, and when the game asked who had more finishers, it was not close.

The win lifts Vegas to 6-2-0, first in the Pacific Division with 12 points, and it was the Knights' fifth win in their last six games. It also came with the kind of short memory good teams need: one night earlier, a 4-2 loss at Minnesota had ended a Vegas winning streak, and instead of letting a road trip wobble, the Knights flew to Nashville and closed the back-to-back with their most complete third period of the young season. Nashville, meanwhile, fell to 2-2-2 for 6 points, and its four-game points streak ended with a thud — competitive for forty minutes, overrun in the last twenty.

Nashville struck first, and early. Ryan O'Reilly put the Predators ahead 1-0 at 3:55 of the first period, the opening goal of a night on which he would add an assist and generally be Nashville's most dangerous forward. Bridgestone had barely settled into the lead before Vegas erased it. Tomas Hertl tied the game 1-1 at 6:46 of the first, and then Jack Eichel — the Knights' engine in every zone — put Vegas ahead 2-1 at 12:48. That is the rhythm Vegas wants on the road: absorb the home team's first push, answer it twice, and make the building play from behind. The Knights' structure, chance after chance this season, has been built on exactly that kind of response speed.

The game's hinge arrived forty-one seconds after Eichel's goal. At 13:09 of the first period, Nashville's Jack Drury was awarded a penalty shot, with a chance to tie the game 2-2 and hand all the momentum back to the home side. Adin Hill stopped it. A penalty shot is hockey's purest one-on-one — no traffic, no screen, just shooter, goalie, and noise — and Hill's save preserved a lead that Nashville spent the rest of the night chasing. Hill finished with 25 saves, according to Reuters and NHL.com, but none of them will travel home on the highlight loop like that one. Goalies talk about saves that change a game's temperature; the building felt it, and so did the Vegas bench, which protected its goaltender's lead through the rest of a first period that could easily have ended level.

Nashville did tie it once more, and did it the hard way. At 8:45 of the second period, Adam Edstrom scored to make it 2-2 — the first short-handed goal of his career, per the game reports, a milestone marker on a play that is supposed to be about survival. Short-handed goals are gut punches: the team on the power play expects to be choosing between a goal and a near-miss, not fishing the puck out of its own net. For a moment, Bridgestone believed again. But Vegas has made a habit this season of treating tied second periods as an invitation rather than a warning, and the answer came before the intermission. William Karlsson scored the go-ahead goal at 17:44 of the second, set up by Mitch Marner, restoring the 3-2 lead and — as it turned out — scoring the game-winner. Karlsson's line has been Vegas's quiet metronome all month, and Marner's feed on the play was the kind of small, precise pass that does not make posters but wins road games.

The third period settled everything, quickly. Trevor Connelly made it 4-2 at 4:49, finishing a play set up by Noah Hanifin, and Brett Howden stretched it to 5-2 at 6:24 — two goals in 1:35, from two more names on a scoresheet that ultimately listed five different Vegas scorers. That spread is the story inside the story. Nashville's Juuse Saros, who made 20 saves according to Reuters and NHL.com, was not beaten by one hot line he could adjust to; he was beaten from everywhere, by a lineup in which the scoring threat never stayed in one place long enough to defend. Rasmus Andersson added two assists for Vegas, quietly running the breakout that let the Knights spend the decisive stretch of the night in Nashville's end rather than their own.

Put the pieces together and Tuesday looks like a template for how this Vegas team intends to win in 2026-27: goaltending that bails out the one big mistake, a top end — Eichel, Hertl, Marner — that produces on schedule, depth scoring that arrives in waves, and a third period played on the front foot instead of in a shell. One night after Minnesota ended their streak, the Knights did not nurse the loss or chase the game; they managed it, period by period, until their depth turned a 3-2 road game into a three-goal win that felt, by the final horn, almost routine. That is what first-place teams do in October — not with statement blowouts every night, but with answers every time the game asks a question.

For Nashville, the positives are real but thin comfort. O'Reilly produced, Edstrom's short-handed milestone gave them a genuine second-period lifeline, and for forty minutes the Predators skated level with the Pacific's leaders. The lesson is in the last twenty minutes: against a team with Vegas's depth, a points streak built on tight games ends the moment coverage slips twice in two minutes. Nashville drops to 2-2-2 and goes back to work looking for the finish that Vegas found three times after the second intermission.

Next up, the road swing ends and the show comes home. The Golden Knights host the Calgary Flames on Thursday, Oct. 15, at T-Mobile Arena — a building that will be loud for a first-place team that just won five of six. If you are tracking the roster news ahead of that homestand, see our latest Golden Knights injury update, and follow the rest of the night's action in our sports section. Vegas leaves Nashville with 12 points, first place, and a reminder — delivered in the third period, in bunches — of why everybody else in the Pacific is chasing them.