The Golden Knights needed to get Dorofeyev going.
Over the past two regular seasons, he has scored 72 goals, 16 more than anyone else for Vegas. But he had only one goal in eight Stanley Cup Playoff games last year, and he had none through the first three games of this series.
Tortorella dropped Dorofeyev from the second line to the fourth line in Game 3, a 4-2 loss at Delta Center on Friday that put Vegas behind 2-1 in the series. One reason was to get him to play a more direct, gritty game.
Then Tortorella put Dorofeyev on the first line with forward Ivan Barbashev and center Jack Eichel to start Game 4 at Delta Center on Monday.
“He’s a scorer,” Tortorella said then. “He’s one of the top players here. We need to try to help him. It’s another guy that’s been surrounded by a lot of good players. He understands what he is to the team. He understands what he needs to do to try to help us find our way.”
Dorofeyev responded by scoring 1:12 into the first period of Game 4, giving Vegas a 1-0 lead. He also appeared to give the Golden Knights the win at 10:22 of overtime.
But the goal was disallowed after video review because the play was offside, and the game didn’t end until defenseman Shea Theodore scored at 19:08 of OT, giving Vegas a 5-4 win and tying the series 2-2.
And in between, Tortorella dropped Dorofeyev from the first line and played him for only two shifts in the third period.
“I’m just going to call them as I see them as far as who’s going to get that ice time,” Tortorella said afterward.
Dorofeyev was back on the first line for Game 5, but not on the first power-play unit to start. After the first unit failed to score on two opportunities in the first period, he got another chance with the first unit and capitalized with a wrist shot from the right circle, tying the score 1-1 with 40.2 seconds left in the period.
“He’s an elite shooter,” defenseman Brayden McNabb said. “He finds spots and gets himself open, and he can bury the puck as we’ve seen throughout his time here.”
