LAS VEGAS – The Vegas Golden Knights rumbled to a series tie, while the Colorado Avalanche turned in another clunker in Game 4.

Jonathan Marchessault scored a hat trick as Vegas won 5-1 on Sunday, sending the best-of-seven series back to Denver at 2-2. Colorado won the first two games.

It wasn’t the rebound effort the Avalanche were looking for after being largely outplayed the past two games. A pair of lapses in judgment led to Golden Knights goals.

Feet away from the net, Patrik Nemeth put a pass right on the tape of Vegas’ Reilly Smith. Nemeth dove to stop the shot, which went off the crossbar. Smith put his arms up as though it had gone in.

Four of the six Avalanche players on the ice might have been convinced, because they didn’t recover in time to stop Marchessault from seeking out and depositing the puck into an empty net. Kiefer Sherwood and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare caught on, but too late.

Andre Burakovsky then clearly wrapped his arm around Alex Tuch’s neck and pulled him down, leading to a melee. On the ensuing power play, Marchessault made it 3-1.

Nemeth was in the thick of things again when Smith found Marchessault at the back door for his third goal. The Avalanche had been picking up some steam before that.

Vegas was playing well enough without Colorado wrapping goals up for them.

“A key to our game is when we’re creating turnovers and we’re putting pressure on teams, we’re getting lots of scoring chances, we’re the aggressors,” forward J.T. Compher said. “We’ve got to get back to that.”

Philipp Grubauer (30 saves) slid back into the net, brushing the puck beyond the goal line, on Patrick Brown’s goal. The Avalanche challenged it, saying Grubauer was interfered with. The final scoring play of the game stood up to inspection.

“That’s the way a series goes. … We didn’t think we were going to come in here and take both games,” forward Brandon Saad said. “I mean, we didn’t play as good as we should have, but there are some things that we did do well that we can kind of regroup here and have short-term memory.

“We know we’ve got a long road ahead of us and we’re looking forward to the challenge.”

One minute, 50 seconds into the game, Saad scooped the puck away from Marc-Andre Fleury’s (17 saves) pads after the Vegas goaltender had attempted to smother it. He put it around him for a 1-0 lead.

There was another quick goal to start the second period when Max Pacioretty went off on a 3-on-2 and sniped a shot inside the far post to make it 2-1.

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