LAS VEGAS (AP) — When Mark Stone returned to the Golden Knights' lineup for Sunday night's Game 3 of the Western Conference Final against Colorado, that also meant the return of Vegas' five-forward power play.

With Stone down low, Mitch Marner shifted to the top in the quarterback role, sending defenseman Shea Theodore to the second unit.

No matter which player is at the top, the Golden Knights' power play is humming.

Stone's goal with the man advantage 19 seconds into the second period cut the Avalanche's lead to 3-1 and sparked a two-period dominance for a 5-3 victory.

“I was lucky enough to find Stoney going backdoor,” Marner said. “From that point on, we just started rolling, the confidence started going a little bit, and everyone started feeling a little better about themselves. We’re a team that doesn’t have any quit in them. We want to make sure every game, regardless of the score, we’re fighting and we’re trying to come back and claw into it.”

And now the Golden Knights, who won the championship three years ago, are one victory from making their third Stanley Cup Final in their nine seasons. They go for the sweep on Tuesday night.

The power play has been a big part of that success. Vegas has scored on it in seven of the past eight games and is converting on a 25% rate for the playoffs, highest among the four remaining teams.

This isn't just a small sample size, either. The Golden Knights ranked sixth in the regular season at 24.6%.

“We feel confident no matter who is on the ice,” wing Pavel Dorofeyev said. “We’re just trying to do our best to help the team to take advantage of the power play.”

No one took advantage more than Dorofeyev, who smashed the team record with 20 power-play goals in the regular season, topping the 14 that Tomas Hertl had just a year ago. Dorofeyev has four such goals this postseason, tied with Stone and the Canadiens' Juraj Slafkovský, two other players entering Monday's play.

Golden Knights coach John Tortorella wouldn't discuss the intricacies of going with the highly unusual five-forward look, but it's a formation he largely inherited from previous coach Bruce Cassidy, who employed that look often this season.

Both coaches probably saw what they had in Marner, who also filled the quarterback role when he played in Toronto when the Maple Leafs tried five forwards.

Other teams have run the five-forward look as well. The New York Rangers tried it this season, Los Angeles and Minnesota used it last year, and Florida and Montreal experimented with it in 2022.

But it's hardly the go-to formation. The vast majority of teams still prefer four forwards with a defenseman patrolling the top. That player is Theodore when the Golden Knights use that scheme.

But now Theodore appears as if he will be at that spot on the second unit as the Golden Knights look to advance to the sport's championship series.

To get there, they likely will need their power play to come through again.

“I think the fourth win is always the hardest to get, whether it’s a first round, second round or conference final,” Theodore said. “We’re going to expect their best. For them, it’s win or go home. We have to match that intensity from the start.”

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Just when the Avalanche got back reigning Norris Trophy winner Cale Makar, Colorado might be without Hart Trophy finalist Nathan MacKinnon.

Or, at least, will have a highly limited MacKinnon, which was what he was after taking a puck to his right knee in Sunday night's 5-3 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights.

It's been that kind of series for the Avalanche, the Presidents' Trophy winners going down 3-0 in the Western Conference Final. With the possibility of being swept Tuesday night, coach Jared Bednar will take MacKinnon in any form he can get him.

“For him to be able to come back out, get some work done late in the second period and intermission and be able to come out and even help us on the power play and empty-net situations, if that’s all he can do, we’ll take it," Bednar said. "It’s better than anything else, in my opinion, we can put on the ice.”

That comment could get plenty of attention in the Avalanche locker room, but as it is, the Golden Knights have Colorado's full focus.

The odds might have been in the Avalanche's favor before the series began — the team with the league's best record going against one so desperate to make the playoffs that it fired its coach with eight games remaining — but not now.

The numbers, in fact, are daunting.

This is the 50th time in the conference finals or league semifinals that a series has gone to 3-0. All previous 49 teams with that advantage went on to make the Stanley Cup Final, with 47 ending the series in six games or fewer.

Only four teams have erased 3-0 deficits in any round. Los Angeles in 2014 was the most recent team to accomplish that in eliminating San Jose in their first-round series.

And then there's the so-called Presidents' Trophy curse. Chicago in 2013 was the last team to claim that and the Stanley Cup in the same season. Colorado already had firsthand knowledge of the difficulty of pulling off the double, winning the Presidents' Trophy in the 2021 COVID-shortened season before going out in six games in the second round ... to the Golden Knights.

“There’s going to be a sense of urgency, but it’s got to be smart urgency,” defenseman Josh Manson said. "It’s got to be desperation. It’s got to be our best style of play the whole night. You’ve got to maintain that sense of do or die, while playing up to the edge. That’s what makes it so difficult.

“The margin of error is so thin now, and you’ve got to be able to balance that for at least 12 periods.”

It will take at least that many periods for the Avalanche to accomplish what no other team has done this deep into the playoffs. They will have to play like the team that looked like the NHL's best for six months and then the first two rounds of the playoffs when they went 8-1.

“We know where we’re at,” wing Martin Necas said. “We know it doesn’t happen very often, but we still feel confident in this group. It’s not like we’ve been outplayed every game and their team is better than ours. We had a lot of stretches this season where we won four in a row. So we just focus on the next game and take it home and anything can happen.”

Getting it back to Denver for Game 5 would be a start.

“Our team's played with more intensity and more desperation as the series (has) gone on,” Bednar said. "Hasn’t worked out for us yet. I think with the hill to climb, it’s definitely a tough one. It just doesn’t happen very often, and we’re certainly understanding of that, but I think we have a lot of pride and a lot of character in our room that displayed that time over time throughout the course of the year,

"This will be our most difficult challenge, but I believe that we will show up and we will be ready to play.”

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