The surging Colorado Avalanche will be going for their third consecutive victory Saturday night when they open a five-game road trip against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Avalanche are coming off a 3-0 home win Wednesday against the Vegas Golden Knights and are on an 8-1-1 roll.
The Maple Leafs, meanwhile, lost 4-3 in overtime on the road Thursday to the New York Islanders after leading 3-1. It ended Toronto’s four-game winning streak.
In Colorado’s win over Vegas, Valeri Nichushkin scored twice on the power play.
Alexandar Georgiev made 25 saves to earn his second shutout of the season.
“When we play the best we can, we have an opportunity to win no matter who is in our lineup,” Avalanche forward Andrew Cogliano said. “We’ve lost guys, but our top guys are on another level. Those guys are playing so well right now that it forces other guys to play at another level as well.”
Georgiev said the Avalanche are playing great team defense.
“Especially this game, we didn’t give them too many odd-man rushes in the zone,” he said. “Everybody’s playing smart, and the forwards are coming back (to help) our ‘D’ now.”
Colorado coach Jared Bednar said players are making really good decisions.
“The execution is high,” he said. “The execution within the game plan and the recognition of what teams are giving us and what could be open is what’s really amped up from the players.”
Nichushkin has 22 goals, 13 on the power play.
“Perfect game for me,” Bednar said. “You’re never going to go through the game with zero scoring chances against. Against good teams, they’re going to have a couple of grade-A chances.”
Nathan MacKinnon had an assist to tie Joe Sakic’s franchise record by scoring at least one point in 23 consecutive home games.
“It’s a different speed with (MacKinnon) out there,” forward Logan O’Connor said. “He’s a guy that we can rely on every single night. He’s a horse out there and he’s easy to follow. He’s doing all the right things.”
Colorado was without Josh Manson (lower-body injury) and Miles Wood (illness).
In wasting a two-goal lead against the Islanders, Toronto reverted to a pattern that became too common earlier this season.
“Special teams were rotten tonight — power play, penalty kill, overtime,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said. “That costs you games. Power play had one chance and did nothing with it. It’s as bad as we’ve looked in any power play. And then penalty kill, it’s in our net before you can even blink to start the game.”
Toronto did get two goals from Auston Matthews, who leads the league with 33.
New York was two-for-three on the power play.
“Not doing a good enough job on the kill,” said forward Mitchell Marner, who had an assist. “We’ve got to get our clears when we’ve got ’em. A couple times we’d just miss the lane by half an inch, half a millimeter, and it ends up in the back of our net.”
“It was a difficult night, for sure,” said Toronto goaltender Martin Jones, who made 26 saves in his sixth straight start. “(New York) play hard, they forecheck hard, they’re big and physical and really play well in front of the net.”
Matthews said the issues started with special teams.
“One power play for us (no shots),” he said, “they make good on two of theirs.”
–Field Level Media
