<p>LAS VEGAS — Max Pacioretty scored twice to lead the Vegas Golden Knights to a 5-2 win over the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night in a matchup of the West Division’s top teams.</p>
<p>Vegas, which has won a franchise-best 10 in a row, now leads Colorado by six points, with the Avalanche having a game in hand. The Golden Knights have outscored teams 45-17 during their win streak.</p>
<p>It marked the 18th time Vegas has scored at least five goals — tops in the NHL.</p>
<p>William Karlsson, Mark Stone, and Jonathan Marchessault also scored for Vegas. Marc-Andre Fleury, who has won five in a row, made 35 saves while improving to 15-8-2 lifetime against Colorado.</p>
<p>Devon Toews and Ryan Graves scored for Colorado, which is 11-4-0 after a loss this season, and has now lost three straight. Devan Dubnyk, who came in 4-3-2 with a 2.54 goals-against average and .924 save percentage against Vegas, made 21 saves. Dubnyk is now 2-2 since being acquired from San Jose on April 10.</p>
<p>The Avalanche were burned for their seventh power-play goal in six games at 9:36 of the second period, when Pacioretty gave Vegas a 2-1 lead as he chipped a wrist shot from the blue line. The puck changed direction after it nicked Toews’ stick, confusing Dubnyk. Pacioretty now has a point in a season-high eight straight games.</p>
<p>Stone made it 3-1 just more than 5 minutes later when he banked the puck off the back of Dubnyk from below the red line.</p>
<p>After Vegas turned the puck over in its own zone, Graves beat Fleury with a snapper through a screen from long range to pull the Avalanche within one. With the assist, Nathan Mackinnon extended his point streak to 15 games, the longest of his career.</p>
<p>Moments after killing off a penalty that carried into the third period, the Golden Knights used the league’s stingiest defense to create an odd-man rush with their most dangerous tandem. Stone created a turnover and skated into the zone before passing to Pacioretty, who fired a wrist shot into a wide-open net for his team-leading 24th goal at 55 seconds.</p>
<p>Marchessault’s empty-netter with less than a minute remaining provided the final margin.</p>
<p>Karlsson put the Golden Knights in front just 10 seconds into the game, when he gathered a loose puck fed from defenseman Alex Pietrangelo, raced in, and netted a backhand short side on Dubnyk. It was the fastest goal to start a game in the franchise’s four-year history. He became the third player to score within the opening 10 seconds of a game in 2020-21.</p>
<p>After collecting themselves from a sluggish start and two penalties, the Avalanche kept immense pressure on Fleury and it eventually paid off when Toews smacked home a rebound to tie it with 6:17 left in the first.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Avalanche: Host San Jose in a back-to-back Friday and Saturday.</p>
<p>Golden Knights: Open a four-game road trip in Arizona on Friday.</p>
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