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Devon Toews scored twice and added an assist as the Avalanche defeated the Florida Panthers 3-1 at Ball Arena on Monday. In addition to Toews' second three-point game of the seaosn, Mikko Rantanen added a goal and Mackenzie Blackwood stopped 26 of the 27 shots he faced.

"I thought we did a great job defending tonight," Avalanche Head Coach Jared Bednar said. "When you look at the way they (the Panthers) play and look at the chances they get on a nightly basis, there's a lot of chaos at the net-front, right?. But tonight, everything looks really dangerous but we broke up a lot of plays at the net-front with sticks [and] blocks. We gave up a few and he (Blackwood) was huge in goal when we needed it and he smothers stuff and calms it down for us."

With the win, the Avs finished the first half of the season with a 25-15-1 record.

How It Happened

Carter Verhaeghe put Florida on the board first with a right-circle one-timer at 15:57 of the first period.

With his fourth goal of the season, Toews tied the game at 18:18 of the second period via a wrist shot from the point that hit the crossbar, bounced in the crease and deflected off Florida goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and in.

"We have a talented group back there," Bednar said about the Avalanche's defensemen. "And they're committed to helping on the offensive side of it."

Toews scored his second goal of the game and fifth of the season to put the Avs up 2-1 at 8:54 of the third with a wrist shot from the point through traffic. In addition to providing a net-front screen, Jusso Parssinen picked up his first point with the Avalanche by recording the secondary assist on Toews' second goal.

Rantanen doubled Colorado's lead and extended his point streak to 14 games with his 24th goal of the season via an empty-net tally at 18:03 of the third.

Next Up

The Avalanche begin a three-game road trip against the Chicago Blackhawks on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. MT on Altitude2, TNT, Max and Altitude+.