Seeing their bid for consecutive Stanley Cups end in the first round wasn’t the only pain the Vegas Golden Knights felt this postseason.

Nine Vegas players had surgeries this season, coach Bruce Cassidy shared Sunday after his team’s 2-1 loss to the Dallas Stars in Game 7 of the Western Conference quarterfinals.

“Nine guys. Your roster is only 23, so nine players,” Cassidy said. “Two of them internal surgeries. You never know how those are going to play out. Some other ones were a little more defined, but I give our guys a lot of credit.”

Even though the Golden Knights had 20 players returning from their 2022-23 title team, they still faced questions heading into the playoffs. Most of those queries were about what a fully healthy Golden Knights team would look like once the postseason started. That also included questions about how trade deadline acquisitions — such as forwards Tomas Hertl and Anthony Mantha, and defenseman Noah Hanifin — would fit on an established team.

The Golden Knights opened the series by winning both games at the American Airlines Center in Dallas to take a 2-0 series lead before the Stars won three straight. Vegas rallied with a 2-0 win in Game 6 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas to force a Game 7.

“Up 2-0, it would’ve been nice to find a way to win two of those three games,” Golden Knights defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said. “They made some adjustments that I don’t think we adjusted well enough right way. That’s on us as players to find a way when we’re up 2-0 to get the job done.”

NHL Injury Viz, a site that tracks games lost to injuries, has data revealing that the Golden Knights were among the teams to lose the most player games to injury during the 2023-24 season.

In total, the Golden Knights had 10 players who missed more than 10 games because of various injuries. Some players, such as defenseman Shea Theodore (35 games) and left winger Mark Stone (26), had extended absences. Others, such as goaltender Adin Hill, missed more than 10 games because of separate injuries. Hill missed seven games because of a lower-body injury and another 15 games because of an undisclosed injury, according to NHL Injury Viz’s data.

Cassidy said many of those injuries happened when the Golden Knights were trying to find cohesion with their forward lines and defense pairings.

Hertl was recovering from a knee procedure when he was acquired via trade from the San Jose Sharks on March 8 and played just six games with his new club before the playoffs. In total, Hertl missed 28 regular-season games between the Golden Knights and Sharks.

“Some of those surgeries are obviously correcting a problem, but it takes us a while to get back up to speed,” Cassidy said. “That would be the unfortunate part. They came and did get healthy enough for the playoffs. That was the positive, and now you are trying to get a team up to speed in a hurry.

“I didn’t do a good enough job of that, but that’s a lot of surgeries in one year for guys to overcome, and it defines your game.”

Stone, who underwent multiple back surgeries last season, was recovering from a lacerated spleen this season before returning ahead of Game 1. The Golden Knights captain said he was proud of how the team performed in the face of what was a challenging set of circumstances.

“We had a hard time staying healthy,” Stone said. “Still found a way to get into the playoffs, and we did give ourselves a chance to win the series with a one-goal loss in Game 7 against the top team in the conference. It’s disappointing. That’s really the only way to say it. It’s disappointing.”

DALLAS — Radek Faksa broke a tie in his return to the Dallas lineup, 20-year-old Wyatt Johnston scored in another Game 7 and the Stars defeated the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights 2-1 on Sunday night to wrap up the first-round series.

After being out with an undisclosed injury since leaving the bench late in Game 2, Faksa scored 44 seconds into the third period with a backhander from the circle to the left of goalie Adin Hill.

“It was a huge relief,” Faksa said on the TNT postgame show. “It was the biggest goal of my career. … I promised (my son) I would score a goal tonight, and I’m glad I did.”

Dallas goalie Jake Oettinger had 21 saves in his second Game 7 victory. He also had the Stars’ only penalty, though they killed that off after he was called for tripping Ivan Barbashev in front of the net midway through the third.

“The last period was a clinic. Just so proud of the guys of how we responded,” Oettinger said. “It’s a long playoffs and you’re going to need different guys to step up at different times. A lot of hockey left so hopefully a lot more heroes. It’s going to be a run ride.”

The Stars, the No. 1 seed in the West, move on to play well-rested Colorado in the second round with the first two games in Dallas. The Avalanche wrapped up their series against Winnipeg with a Game 5 victory Tuesday night.

Brett Howden scored for Vegas, which couldn’t pull off another series winner in Dallas, where last year the Knights wrapped up the Western Conference Final with a win in Game 6. Hill had 22 saves in his third game of this series after Logan Thompson started the first four.

The visitor won the first four games in this series until the home teams held serve the last three games.

Dallas has won Game 7s in each of its first two postseasons for coach Pete DeBoer, who is now 8-0 in his career in such games with four different teams. That includes the Knights’ only Game 7 wins in 2020 and 2021 when he was their coach.

Johnston scored his series-high fourth goal on a wrister from the top of the slot with 5:26 left in the first period after picking off a clearing pass by Shea Theodore that his teammate, Tomas Hertl, missed when taking a twisting swipe at it.

“It was so much fun,” Johnston said in his postgame interview on Bally Sports Southwest. “It’s what we all grew up dreaming about. As hockey players, you want to play in Game 7s. And there was so much energy in the building.”

A day after his 20th birthday last year, Johnston became the youngest player in NHL history with a game-clinching goal in a Game 7. He gathered a puck that ricocheted off the back boards in the third period of the Stars’ 2-1 win over Seattle in that second-round series.

The goal Sunday against came in quick succession after Vegas had two scoring chances. Oettinger made a tough save to deny Jack Eichel and Jonathan Marchessault then shot the rebound off the left post, and got a hit on Johnston before the Dallas youngster skated to the other end and scored about 10 seconds later.

Vegas, which returned 22 of its 27 players from the Stanley Cup-winning roster, tied it in the second period when Michael Amadio made a crossing pass to Howden, who poked the puck into the open left side of the net behind Oettinger.

The only coach other than DeBoer to win eight Game 7s is Darryl Sutter, who was 8-3 in such games over 182 playoff games over 15 postseasons with four teams.

The Knights are 2-2 in Game 7s. DeBoer was also the opposing coach in their other loss, to San Jose in 2019.

It was only the second time of 16 that the Stars won a best-of-seven series after losing the first two games. The only other was the very first playoff series in franchise history, when the Minnesota North Stars were down 0-2 before beating the Los Angeles Kings in seven games to open the 1968 playoffs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — Hurricanes defenseman Tony DeAngelo heard often vulgar chants from New York Rangers fans during Carolina’s 4-3 Game 1 loss on Sunday, especially when his first-period penalty led to a critical power-play goal.

“I don’t give two you-know-whats about it,” said DeAngelo, who played for the Rangers from 2016 to 2021.

The Rangers’ torrid power play needed just 23 seconds to score twice in the first period. Mika Zibanejad scored nine seconds after DeAngelo’s roughing penalty on Rangers forward Will Cuylle, and Vincent Trocheck scored 14 seconds after Evgeny Kuznetsov‘s cross-checking foul on Rangers defenseman Adam Fox. New York went 2-for-2 against Carolina’s top-ranked penalty kill after going 6-for-16 in the first round against the Washington Capitals.

DeAngelo was penalized on a strange sequence that saw Carolina forward Martin Necas initially called for tripping on Cuylle. With Necas in the box, the officials conferred on the ice, and it was determined the wrong player had been penalized: Rather than a trip from Necas, it was a leaping hit from DeAngelo that knocked Cuylle to the ice. After that was established, the officials then announced they were reviewing the DeAngelo hit for a major penalty on an illegal check to the head. It was determined the call was simply a roughing minor, instead.

When asked if the referees had offered an explanation, Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said “not one that made sense” to him.

“I’m not even going to get into it,” DeAngelo said about the call. “It’s tough. We had five power plays too, so they can go both ways. It’s a tough job for them guys, and then they make a call. So, it is what it is.”

Penalties at inopportune times plagued the Hurricanes in Game 1. That included an Andrei Svechnikov tripping penalty just six seconds after the Rangers’ Trocheck was whistled for knocking the puck over the glass with this hand at 19:19 of the third period, with Carolina trailing by one goal and its goalie pulled.

The Hurricanes were 22nd in the NHL in penalties taken during the regular season. Captain Jordan Staal felt the Game 1 atmosphere at Madison Square Garden led to some regrettable penalties early in the game for his team.

“We’ve talked about [it] before, all year long. Especially in an emotional building like this, it always seems to get everyone riled up, and we were at fault again to start,” he said. “I thought we were better as the game went on and settled down a little bit. Obviously, the crowd can get the refs going here tonight, and we get fired up. We obviously talked after the first period that we need to settle down a little bit, and we did.”

But Brind’Amour didn’t believe his team was undisciplined in Game 1.

“Svech, I don’t know what else you want to do there. He’s fighting for a puck. That’s certainly not an undisciplined penalty. Kuzy, he’d like to have that back, but the guy did it to him, and it’s one of those, ‘You always catch the second guy.’ He knows better,” Brind’Amour said.

“And then Tony’s was more — I don’t know, if the guy doesn’t fall, it’s probably not a call, so that’s not an undisciplined penalty for me was there. But like I said, we don’t want to take any penalties.”

Game 2 is scheduled for Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, where Rangers fans will again be ready to create a raucous environment to support their team and fluster the opponents. DeAngelo pushed back on the idea that the atmosphere could cause Carolina to play undisciplined hockey.

“No, that’s the playoffs. Our rink is louder than all of them, so we could say the same thing about ours,” he said. “But you guys know how great New York is as a sports town. They do a good job cheering their team on. But we don’t care.”