Pavel Dorofeyev, who led the Vegas Golden Knights with 35 goals this season, will not play Thursday night in Game 6 at Minnesota because of an undisclosed injury.
Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said after the team’s morning skate in St. Paul that Dorofeyev was day to day and will be replaced in the lineup by Victor Olofsson, who scored 15 goals this season. Olofsson also will take Dorofeyev’s spot on the power play.
“It’s not like we’re plugging in a guy that’s never scored, so hopefully he picks up some of what Pav did in terms of the play,” Cassidy said. “We’ve got lots of guys in the lineup that can do it. We’ll miss him, obviously, but we weren’t overly reliant on one player anyway.”
Dorofeyev was injured late in the Golden Knights’ 3-2 overtime victory over the Wild on Tuesday night.
He started that game on the top line with Jack Eichel and William Karlsson. Mark Stone took Dorofeyev’s place on the line. The combined lines outshot the Wild 8-3 at 5-on-5, according to Natural Stat Trick.
“(Stone has) played with Jack a lot,” Cassidy said. “We wanted to see Stoney with Karly, so there you go. It took us a while. It’s just the way things worked out a little bit. … I think it was our intention Stoney and Jack would be back together at some point.”
The Golden Knights lead 3-2 and will try to close out the first-round Western Conference series. If the Wild win, Game 7 will be Saturday in Las Vegas.
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