Golden Knights rally for round-robin win against Stars

The Vegas Golden Knights scored four goals in the third period to rally for a 5-3 win against the Dallas Stars in the opening game of the round-robin portion of the Stanley Cup Qualifiers at Rogers Place in Edmonton on Monday.

William Carrier made it 4-3 with 5:13 remaining, and William Karlsson scored into an empty net with 21 seconds left for the 5-3 final.

Nate Schmidt, Mark Stone and Chandler Stephenson scored, and Robin Lehner made 24 saves for the Golden Knights, who will play the St. Louis Blues on Thursday and the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday in Edmonton, the Western Conference hub city.

Carrier skated through the goalmouth and was initially ruled to have interfered with Stars goalie Ben Bishop. But Golden Knights coach Peter DeBoer challenged, and video review determined Carrier's incidental contact occurred outside of the crease.

"I felt strongly about it for a couple reasons," DeBoer said. "One, I liked how we were playing. I thought I owed it to our team to challenge that. If we didn't get it, I was very confident we would have killed the penalty. We just had the momentum, and I thought it was important to show that belief in the group.

"At the same time, I felt strongly that it was a good challenge. I thought [Carrier] did everything in his power to try and avoid contact. I didn't believe he went through the crease at all."

WATCH: [All Stars vs. Golden Knights highlights]

It was Carrier's first goal in 18 NHL postseason games. He had six shots on goal and four hits in 10:02 of ice time.

"I was just trying to get the puck to the net," Carrier said. "We tried doing that more in the third period. They've got a good goaltender, so we're just trying to get there, and obviously whatever way it takes to get it there."

Miro Heiskanen had three assists, and Bishop made 28 saves for the Stars, who also play the Avalanche on Wednesday and the Blues on Sunday to determine seeding for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

"We just got away from our game," Dallas coach Rick Bowness said. "There's only one way to play this game, and that's the right way. We stopped playing the right way. We just got very soft on the puck. The plays at the blue lines were both very soft, and all that does is give them momentum.

"We just made it too easy for them to play. You're turning the puck over like we did at the lines, just soft plays. It's something we didn't do for 40 minutes. We'll learn from that."

Joe Pavelski, Jamie Oleksiak and Corey Perry scored on consecutive shots in a 4:52 span of the second period to give the Stars a 3-1 lead.

Pavelski tied it 1-1 at 7:50 when his attempted pass went in off Alec Martinez's skate. Oleksiak made it 2-1 at 8:32, and Perry scored a power-play goal at 12:42 to make it 3-1 with a deflection of Heiskanen's shot.

The Golden Knights made it 3-2 at 9:46 of the third period when Mark Stone scored from the slot, and Schmidt tied it 3-3 at 11:15 with a shot from the left circle after Reilly Smith's attempted pass hit Stars defenseman John Klingberg's skate.

"Obviously you want to protect the lead, but I think going into the third we understood it was a big period, that they'd come out and we'd see their best game," Pavelski said. "We didn't keep our level high enough. Whether you're trying to protect the lead or not, there's a certain way we want to play, and we didn't execute. We didn't stay on them like we did earlier in the game, going at them, coming at them in waves."

After being outshot 13-10 in the second period, the Golden Knights had a 16-6 advantage in the third.

"After [the second period], we talked about it," DeBoer said. "It wasn't X's and O's, there was no magical system fix to what was wrong. They were the hungrier team for 40 minutes. They were quicker to pucks. They were more physical. They were hungrier is the best way I could describe it. Until we fixed that, we weren't going to have any success. That's where it started. We got some momentum and we played like we should have played for 60 minutes."

Vegas took a 1-0 lead at 1:04 of the first period when Stephenson used Klingberg as a screen and put a shot between Bishop's pads.

The seeds will be determined by points in the round-robin, with regular-season points percentage being the tiebreaker.