LAS VEGAS (AP) The Vegas Golden Knights were a 500-to-1 long shot to win the Stanley Cup before the NHL season began in October. Their surprisingly successful inaugural season is still rolling along Mike Smith Jersey , and they’re one win from a berth to the Stanley Cup final.Reilly Smith scored on a breakaway late in the third period to lead Vegas to a 3-2 victory over the Winnipeg Jets in Game 4 of the Western Conference final Friday night.Vegas can clinch the conference title and advance to the Stanley Cup final when the series resumes Sunday in Winnipeg.”The last one is always the toughest to get,” Golden Knights goalie Marc-Andre Fleury said.William Karlsson and Tomas Nosek also scored for Vegas, and Fleury, ninth all-time in postseason wins, turned in another spectacular performance by making 36 saves to earn his 73rd career playoff victory. The 14-year veteran goalie, left exposed by the Pittsburgh Penguins for Vegas to select him in the expansion draft, continues to have a career-best postseason as he aims for a third straight Stanley Cup title.”I think we’ve got to keep the same mindset,” said Fleury, who has a 1.72 goals against average and .945 save percentage in the playoffs. ”Just take it one game at time and not think too far ahead and be ready to play that next game, because they’re going to be coming hard.”It’s something the Jets have already been doing, even in their three losses in the series.Asked how his team has been able to survive Winnipeg’s tenacious attack, Smith replied: ”He’s sitting right next to me,” referring to Fleury at the postgame news conference.But with the game tied at 2 Sean Monahan Jersey , it was Smith who made the big play after racing down the left side of the rink and beating Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck above his blocker to put the Golden Knights ahead with 6:58 left.Hellebuyck made 27 saves, but lost for the third consecutive game despite telling reporters after Game 3 that he liked his game better than Fleury’s. Patrik Laine and Tyler Myers scored for Winnipeg, which is on the brink of elimination.”I know we can win a game, we’re a good enough team,” Winnipeg coach Paul Maurice said. ”We’ve battled. We’ve gone into some pretty heavy environments and won a game that we needed to win. So it’s just one game.”The Jets took over where they left off in the third period of Game 3 by outskating the Golden Knights in the first period of Game 4, but Karlsson’s power-play goal was the difference. Off the draw, Smith found Jonathan Marchessault, who fed Karlsson for the one-timer that gave Vegas a 1-0 lead.In a case of deja vu from Game 3, when Vegas responded 12 seconds after giving up a 1-0 lead, Winnipeg and the Golden Knights traded goals 43 seconds apart midway through the second period.First, it was Laine’s one-timer on the power play that even Fleury wasn’t catching up to and it tied the game at the 9:29 mark. Then, it was Hellebuyck failing to secure a shot by Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, who raced to the puck and fed Nosek TJ Brodie Jersey , who punched in his first career playoff goal to put Vegas up 2-1.”It’s a good way to be, when they get one, the next guy’s up and ready to go,” said Golden Knights forward James Neal, who is looking to make it to the Stanley Cup final for a second consecutive year after getting there with Nashville last season. ”It’s always hard when you get one and the other team scores right away, it kind of takes the wind right back out of you. For us being at home, it just energizes the building. As soon as it sucks the wind out, boom, huge goal, and we’re back.”That was a great goal by Nose.”The Jets outshot the Golden Knights 12-2 by the midway point of the third period – including Myers’ tying goal – keeping Fleury busy. But the three-time Cup champion was finished allowing anything in his net.”We win that game nine times out of 10 – tonight was that one,” Winnipeg’s Blake Wheeler said. ”Their goalie made some extraordinary saves, he’s a good player. You’ve got to sometimes take your hat off to a good player.”NOTES: The Golden Knights and Jets joined a record 18,697 in attendance in a moment of silence for those affected by the shootings at Santa Fe High School in Texas on Friday. … Jets forward Mark Scheifele Womens Travis Hamonic Jersey , who registered his 10th and 11th road goals in Game 3 to set a single-year NHL postseason record, had his six-game goal streak as a visitor end.UP NEXTGame 5 is at Winnipeg on Sunday.— Shandor Alphonso never envisioned his hockey career taking him to officiating. He didn’t have to look far to see it was possible.As a young, black player, all Alphonso had to do was watch ”Hockey Night in Canada” or the Stanley Cup Final and he saw fellow minority Jay Sharrers working as a linesman.”To be able to see someone who kind of looked like me working at the biggest stage of his job, it was unreal,” Alphonso said.The 34-year-old Alphonso is the NHL’s only African-American official, and Calgary Flames assistant Paul Jerrard is the league’s only black coach. With the sport’s expansion to some nontraditional markets across the United States, there are almost two dozen black players in the NHL, but Sharrers, Alphonso and Jerrard serve as inspiration for more to follow into positions of authority.”I think it’s an evolutionary process,” said Sharrers, who recently retired. ”It’s definitely moved slowly, but I think when you just look at the amount of black players that are now in the league and the fact that that has increased Custom Los Angeles Kings Jerseys , it would stand to reason that hopefully the opportunity for officials would present itself.”Sixty years after Willie O’Ree of the Boston Bruins broke the color barrier as the NHL’s first black player, the league is still taking steps to increase its diversity. Alphonso is an ambassador for the ”Hockey is for Everyone” campaign this month, which is Black History Month.Sharrers acknowledged the expense of playing hockey has been a hurdle for minority children for years, but said he is optimistic that more will not only lace up their skates but move into other roles.”It just stands to reason that that would be a natural progression, that there would more officials of color,” Sharrers said. ”The league has been very proactive since they partnered with Willie and created the diversity taskforce almost 20 years ago to expose and to present to people of color that hockey is a great game and it’s a viable opportunity.”Opportunities have existed for minorities to get into coaching and officiating, though the majority have ended up as goaltending coaches like former NHL goalie Fred Brathwaite. Jerrard played five games in the NHL and then went into coaching, where he’s a visible role model – even if that’s not a role he was looking for.”I’m just another coach who’s trying to do a good job in the league and stay in the league,” said Jerrard, 52, who has been an assistant with the Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars and Flames along with several American Hockey League teams. ”I guess I am now in a little bit of a position of a role model, but my drive to be a role model isn’t due to the color of my skin. It’s just the way I wanted carry myself as a human being http://www.hurricanesshoponline.com/aut … kov-jersey , the way I want to be looked at: doing the right thing and working hard.”Jerrard hopes kids seeing minorities on the ice playing or officiating or behind the bench coaching shows that ”if they’re skilled, driven and passionate, there’s an opportunity for them.”That’s what happened for Alphonso, who knew he wasn’t going to make it to the NHL as a player and wanted to stay in the game. He thought to himself, ”If Jay Sharrers can do it, I could do it” and followed him up the ranks.Now Alphonso is the one kids can look up to, and Sharrers – who became the NHL’s first black referee in 2001 – believes his younger counterpart can have an even bigger impact.”Being that his skin is a lot darker than mine and I’m very light-skinned, it wouldn’t register necessarily with someone unless they knew my background to know that I was a person of color,” Sharrers said. ”I think for him having both parents being black and being much more of a visible minority, if you will, I think that’s definitely a role that he will now assume.”Alphonso welcomes that position and would love to one day meet a fellow official he inspired to go that route.”It’s huge for younger kids to see there are way more things to hockey than just being a hockey player,” Alphonso said. ”That’s hopefully what we can inspire these kids to do and get them more involved with the game down the road.”—