For the third time in his National Hockey League career, centre Brett Howden of Calgary, Alberta scored a game-winning goal in overtime in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He accomplished the feat in a 5-4 Vegas Golden Knights win over the Utah Mammoth at the T-Mobile Arena in Paradise, Nevada on Wednesday.
What made Howden’s goal on Wednesday memorable is the fact the goal came with the Golden Knights shorthanded. Howden in fact is the second player in NHL history to score a shorthanded postseason overtime game-winning goal in a game that required multiple overtimes. According to kulakskorner.com, the first player to accomplish the feat was Tomas Hertl of the San Jose Sharks in game six of the first round of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Ironically, the Sharks beat the Golden Knights 2-1 at 11:17 of double overtime to tie the series at three. Canadian Olympic gold medalist and defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic of Montreal, Quebec had the lone assist. Vlasic won a gold medal for Canada at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi.
In the Golden Knights’s win over the Mammoth on Wednesday, Howden scored from Mitch Marner of Markham, Ontario at 5:28 of the second overtime period. Howden was one of two Canadians to score for the Golden Knights. The other was defenseman Shea Theodore of Langley, British Columbia. Theodore, who scored the overtime winner in game four of the series in Utah on Monday, also had a multi-point game as he had an assist for two points.
The first time Howden scored a Stanley Cup Playoff overtime winner was on May 19, 2023 in a 4-3 Golden Knights win over the Dallas Stars in game one of the Western Conference Finals. The second time Howden scored a Stanley Cup Playoff overtime winner was on April 29, 2025 in a 3-2 Golden Knights win over the Minnesota Stars in game five of the first round. With the win over the Mammoth, the Golden Knights have a 3-2 lead in the best out of seven series.
