DENVER — Dylan Coghlan fired a shot hard along the ice and watched it disappear beneath the goalie’s pads.Ball Arena went quiet, and Coghlan turned to look at his teammate, Shea Theodore, who was grinning from ear to ear.“It was pretty crazy,” Coghlan recalled, barely, after the game. “I didn’t know it went in until I turned and looked at Shea. He was smiling at me. Just kind of blacked out for a second.”It was the first playoff goal of Coghlan’s career. It was his first NHL goal of any kind in 1,615 days. It was the opening goal of the Western Conference final on Wednesday night, and it sparked the Vegas Golden Knights to a 4-2 win over the Avalanche to steal home-ice advantage from the Presidents’ Trophy winners.“I’m happy for him, because he’s plugged along, plugged along,” coach John Tortorella said of Coghlan, who played nearly the entire 2025-26 season in the American Hockey League before joining Vegas for the playoffs. “It’s a huge goal for us. The game was going both ways, then they had momentum. He’s an easy guy to pull for.”Coghlan’s previous NHL goal came on Dec. 17, 2021, in a shootout win for the Golden Knights over the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. In between those goals for Vegas, he played for seven different teams in two different leagues. His four-year journey was tumultuous, but Coghlan maintained an unwavering confidence throughout and is now playing the best hockey of his life, under the bright lights of the Stanley Cup playoffs.“This is probably the best I’ve felt my whole career,” Coghlan said. “Whoever I’m playing with, I’m comfortable with them. We have some pretty world-class players.”The 28-year-old spent the previous four seasons largely grinding through the AHL, bouncing between the minor-league systems of three different organizations. His professional career began in 2018 with the Chicago Wolves, then the Golden Knights’ top minor-league affiliate. He made his NHL debut for Vegas in February 2021 and appeared in 91 games across three seasons before being traded to Carolina in 2022.Coghlan has always had a flair for the dramatic. On the night he scored his first NHL goal in March 2021, he also scored two more to become the first rookie, and the first defenseman, to record a hat trick in Vegas’ then-short franchise history. They were his only three goals that season.In the summer of 2022, he was dealt to the Hurricanes as a sweetener in a trade that sent Max Pacioretty and the final year of his four-year, $28 million contract to Carolina to clear cap space. Coghlan recorded three assists in 17 games for the Hurricanes that season.